Subterranea 2 (July 2003)

Issue 2

July 2003

The Post Office
Railway
Mail Rail

Zossen Wunsdorf
Germany

Books, News and
Reviews

Subterranea

Subterranea Britannica is a society devoted to the study of man-made and man-used, underground structures and the
archaeology of the Cold War. The main focus of interest is on abandoned and forgotten structures and, in the case of
Cold War structures, studies are entirely confined to declassified and decommissioned structures.

The society is open to all and its membership includes all walks of life. Members are invited to contribute to this newsletter
even if this just means sending very welcome snippets from newspapers and magazines.

Editor

Dan McKenzie

Please send contributions to;

Dan McKenzie, 53 Home Pasture, Werrington, Peterborough, PE4 SAY
E-mail dan.mckenzie@bunkertours.co.uk

Contents

News Page

Bunker auction nets £170,000 2

Acid Water drained from Mine 2

Bunker Mentality 2

Greenham Common Newbury 4

Milton Keynes Nuclear Bomb Shelter 4

Security Firm Buys Cold War Bunker 5

Books Page

Underground Wimbledon 6

Fortress Lowestoft 1939-1945 6

Nottinghamshire Miners tales 7

Letter to the Editor Copacabana Fort 7

Features Page

Baghdad Express 8

Trust the Swiss to be Ready and Waiting 9

Post Office Railway Mail Rail 11

Flome Security Region 5 (London) War Room 15
Wiltshire Stone Quarry Railways 18

Zossen Wunsdorf Germany 26

East Cambridgeshire Council Emergency Centre 32
A Little French Excursion - Sub Brit Trip to Metz 34

Subterranea Shop 17

Honorary President:

Chairman:

Vice-Chairman:

Secretary:

Membership

Treasurer:

Prof. C.T. Shaw
Paul W Sowan
MC Black
Roger Starling
Nick Catford
Gerald Tagg

Committee

Linda Bartlett
Sylvia Beamon
John Burgess
Richard Challis
Martin Dixon
Gary Gill
Dan McKenzie
Simon Mickleburgh
Robin Ware

Admin Support
Marketing

Mailing List Manager

Editor Subterranea
Admin Support

Ex Officio

Mark Bennett Website Manager

Newsletters of Subterranea Britannica are published by the committee of Subterranea Britannica. Original articles , book reviews, press
cuttings, extracts from books and journals, letters to the editor etc. are welcome. However the editor reserves the right not to publish

material without giving a reason.

The committee of Subterranea Britannica and the editor do not necessarily agree with any views expressed and cannot check the

accuracy of any material sent in.

Front and Rear Cover Photographs: The Post Office Railway - Mail Rail, all Photos By Nick Catford

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Subterranea

News

Bunker auction nets £170,000

An online auction of underground nuclear
bunkers (ROC Posts) has raised over £170,000.

The 13 decommissioned bunkers, including five
across Yorkshire, were offered for sale on the
Internet site eBay.

Each single-roomed shelter was built in the 1950s
and designed to house a three-man observation team
during a possible Cold War attack.

The shelters, which were built 15 feet below ground,
were put up for sale by a telecommunications

company after it bought them from the Ministry of
Defence.

Despite having no gas, electricity or water the

unusual 'des res' attracted
hundreds of bids during
S ^ the 10-day auction.

.. One in Pickering, North

/ Yorkshire, was eventually

«■. sold for £17,100 with the

total from all 13 sites
reaching £170,702.

Kiki Buchanan, from
agents JH Walter, said
she was delighted with the success of the unsual
sale.

She said: "We were overwhelmed with interest about
the sales. "People wanted them for a variety of
reasons such as birdwatching or somewhere to take
their wife. "One man wanted to keep his train set
down there while another man bought two."

story from BBC NEWS

How much they fetched
Barwick-in-Elmet, Leeds - £7,500
Dent, North Yorkshire - £11,330.34
Lindholme. South Yorkshire - £14,100
Pickering, North Yorkshire £17,100
Rossington, South Yorkshire - £10,100

Acid water drained from mine

Work to drain millions of gallons of polluted
water from mine workings inside a mountain in
north Wales has started.

An acidic underground lake in a former copper mine
inside Mynydd Parys on Anglesey is to be drained to
avert a potential environmental disaster.

The mine, near Amlwch, has an estimated 50,000
cubic metres of acidic water trapped underground in
abandoned workings and shafts.

There are fears over the impact on the environment if
the concrete dam, which holds back the water,
should give way.

Over the decades, rainwater has seeped through the
rocks of the four century-old mine, picking up
dangerous metals.

Repair

A polluted lake has formed and fears were raised
when cracks were discovered in the concrete dam
holding back the water.

Last year, Anglesey County Council was warned the
dam was in urgent need of repair, and pledged
£20,000 to tackle the problem.

A working group was set up which included the
council, the Environment Agency, Amlwch Industrial
Heritage Trust, the Anglesey Mining Company and
other funding bodies.

David Jenkins from the Amlwch Heritage Trust said a
study had shown that
any flooding would have j
a major impact on the '
local area.

"The river would flush
right through the middle
of Amlwch and create
major flooding," he said.

"The failure could have
happened at any time, in
10 years time or in a

day's time - it was felt it was a risk not worth taking,"
he added.

Location

Dave Wagstaff, who has carried out some of the
investigation underground, described the scene
below the mountain. "There are pools of acidic water
with a pH value of about two, which is like a diluted
battery acid. "The colour of the water is like a very
good claret, but if you stayed in it for any length of
time, it wouldn't do you much good at all," he said.
Water will be pumped out of the mountain by a team
of specialist contractors over a period of four to eight
weeks.

The project is being financed by the Welsh
Development Agency and Anglesey County Council.
Copper mining had taken place at Parys Mountain for
centuries, until it was brought to a halt in 1915.

Since then, its distinctive landscape has proved
popular as a location for science fiction films and TV
programmes, including Dr Who.

story from BBC NEWS

Bunker mentality

They're everywhere, hundreds of them, but
they're not easy to spot. Now, however, many of
us, terrified at the growing prospect of global
strife, have an underground shelter in our sights.
Sarah Lonsdale reports

High on a hillside near Horncastle in Lincolnshire, in
the corner of a field, a small concrete plinth and foot

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Subterranea

News

or so of ventilation unit stick out of the mud, the only
visible evidence of an underground nuclear bunker
built during the Cold War, designed to house three-
man teams from the Royal Observer Corps. The
bunker, and two others like it, outside nearby Boston
and Newark, respectively, are on the market for
£3,000 each.

Odd pieces of property that in other years may well
have passed unnoticed, the three bunkers have
attracted enormous interest from potential buyers at a
time when the news is full of stories about Saddam
Hussein's Baghdad bunkers, and the Americans’
attempts to destroy them with their bunker-busting
5001b bombs.

The agents selling the Lincolnshire bunkers have had
to organise bulk viewings to satisfy demand: "I have
been absolutely stunned by the level of interest. I've
never been so busy in my life," says Patrick Welby-
Everard, of the chartered surveyors J H Walter, who
are selling the bunkers on behalf of a
telecommunications company that bought them from
the Ministry of Defence at the end of the Cold War.
"We have had inquiries from a huge range of people,
such as scientific establishments wanting to use them
as labs because there is very little vibration through
the thick walls, to private individuals who want an
unusual holiday cottage. At least one person has
specifically mentioned wanting a bunker for bomb
protection."

Each bunker, which is about the size of a large
bedroom, comes with a small amount of land, all with
wonderful views of surrounding countryside. One of
the bunkers, advertised on the internet auction site
eBay, attracted more than 50 bids before finally
selling for £8,200.

Local authorities and the MoD have been selling off
underground bunkers since the end of the Cold War.
Now considered "surplus to requirements" by cash-
starved authorities - the big ones cost thousands of
pounds a year to keep ventilated and free from damp
- they are being snapped up by businesses and
individuals looking for secure storage or somewhere
safe to go in the event of some as yet indiscernible
attack.

"When bunkers first started to be sold off in the mid-
1990s they were as cheap as chips," says Jason
Blackiston, of Subterranea Britannica, a group of
people sharing a deep fascination for all things
underground, from caves and tunnels to Cold War
bunkers. "You could buy a four-storey bunker
underneath quite a bit of land, with other facilities
such as generators, above-ground buildings and
decontamination units for less then £80,000. Today,
similar-sized properties are going for upwards of
£350,000."

Gloucestershire County Council is currently deciding
what to do with one of its surplus bunkers. The two-
floor, 1950s-built bunker with a three-bedroom

bungalow on top of it as well as a disused sewage
plant on site, was nearly sold recently at an asking
price of £400,000, but the sale was not completed
and it may be re-marketed soon. Extremely unlovely
to look at, it is situated in the beautiful Cotswolds,
near Cheltenham, and would make a bizarre yet
secure holiday home.

Ben Kendall, of Pygott and Crone agency in Lincoln,
has just sold a three-storey underground bunker near
Skendleby, Lincolnshire with an asking price of
£375,000, to an unnamed Lincoln businessman. The
bunker, which, with its four-foot thick concrete walls,
was built to withstand a nuclear blast, could sleep
130 people, comes with a fully-equipped
broadcasting studio and was designed for use as a
regional command headquarters in the event of
Britain being attacked by the Soviet Union.

"We had around 70 responses when we first put in on
the market, from people wanting to use it as a wine
store, a private house and a secure storage facility
for computer data," says Mr Kendall. Other
decommissioned bunkers recently sold are being
used as nightclubs, recording studios and internet
server headquarters.

Anyone wanting to buy some of the bunkers for sale
will have to bear in mind that they are nothing like the
luxurious one that Saddam Hussein had built for him.
Designed by Boswau & Knauer, the German firm that
built Hitler's Berlin bunker, it has - or maybe had -
gold light switches, spa baths and enough freeze-
dried food to feed 50 people for a year, as well as two
emergency exits. Another is modelled on one used
by the Yugoslav leader Marshall Tito.

In the UK, there are hundreds of ex-MoD bunkers,
but only a few privately built ones. Mike Thomas, an
engineer by trade, built his own 300 sq ft, two-floor
bunker underneath his West Country home in the
mid-1980s, at the height of the Reagan-Thatcher era,
when many people feared we were teetering on the
brink of nuclear disaster. After having a very vivid
dream about bombs falling, Mr Thomas excavated
the 22 ft deep bunker and put a house on top of it.

"It is built on the Swiss government model," says Mr
Thomas. "I have furnished it with bunk beds and
regularly renew my stocks of tinned food." He has
frequent visits from the bunker enthusiasts of
Subterranea Britannica, who come to sleep in the
underground bedrooms. His bunker, which he says is
extremely dry and easy to maintain, cost him around
£30,000 to build 20 years ago. "I should think with the
price of materials today, especially reinforced
concrete, an identical one would cost £100,000."
Fears of terrorist attacks and general insecurity about
the current war in Iraq have sparked interest not only
in underground bunkers. Steel manufacturer Corus
has come up with the ultimate noughties icon,
combining our obsession with immediacy with our
paranoia about security: the flat-pack bomb shelter.

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Subterranea

News

Designed, says the company, "in response to
growing terrorism and security concerns", the panels
of steel and concrete can be assembled in just a few
days to make office buildings, barracks and
personnel shelters. Unless you are a minimalist,
however, your sense of aesthetics may be wounded
by the construction's functional, box-like appearance.
A far prettier alternative is to buy 68 Castle Street,
Canterbury. This 18th-century, listed townhouse has
elegant staircases, ceiling mouldings and Flemish
gables. What makes it stand out, however, is that it
has been home to one of the city's oldest firms of
solicitors for more than 100 years and has two 19th-
century strongrooms inside, designed to keep gun-
toting gangsters away from clients' cash.

Extremely robust, the iron-walled, walk-in safes are
easily large enough to protect a family, probably for
several weeks. "But we haven't actually seen inside
them," admits Edward Church, of selling agents Strutt
& Parker. "The doors are always locked."

Property Telegraph (Filed: 12/04/2003)

Greenham Common Newbury

From Property Week magazine 4*^ April 2003

For sale by informal tender 14'^ May 2003, By Order
of Defence Estates. Former Ground launched cruise
missile alert and maintenance area. A freehold site of
approximately 30000 Flectares (75000 Acres).

Arranged to provide six major storage bunkers, five
further bunkers plus various surface buildings, approx
7000 sq M (75000 sq ft) in Total.

The site is designated as a cold war monument by
English Fleritage. Guide price £100,000+ More
information from Allsop property Consultants 0207
494 3686

Received From Matthew Clark

Milton Keynes' Nuclear Bomb
Shelter

TFIE secrets surrounding Milton Keynes' nuclear
bomb shelter can be revealed for the first time today.
The 43ft X 45ft underground bunker was sited
underneath Bletchley fire station in Sherwood Drive.
It was the base from which council officers were
theoretically supposed to coordinate emergency relief
in the event of the unthinkable - a nuclear bomb
falling on Milton Keynes during the Cold War.

But MK news can reveal that the nuclear bunker was
anything but ready. Milton Keynes Council's
emergency planning officer Alastair Bartholomew told
us how: it wasn't designed for people to live there for
more than 10 days. Yet lethal effects from nuclear
fallout can last for months, even years, the line with
the outside world - the bunker's own telephone
exchange - was so old it was 'like something out of
the 1930s'. the chairs from which city top brass would
make vital decisions were so uncomfortable, you
couldn't sit down on them for longer than 10 minutes.
Mr Bartholomew said: "I wouldn't have liked to have
been in it if we were hit by an ordinary bomb, let
alone a nuclear bomb."

But it wasn't all doom and gloom. No councillors,
contrary to public opinion and probably their own,
would have been among the select few to have been
invited down there. Mr Bartholomew added:
"Positions filled by police, other key emergency
service workers, the military, council officers, but
NOT councillors - despite what most of the public
and the councillors themselves might have thought.
"The so-called bunker provided a focus for the
support to the local population still living above the
ground.

"It would've been an extremely difficult job, trying to
co-ordinate feeding any remaining people who
survived and clearing the roads of dead bodies. "And,
with the best will in the world, it was felt that the
councillors might not do that any better in the bunker
than they would outside up above. "We might have
stretched a point to the council chief, the Isobel
Wilson of the day, but that’s all, if any."

The multi-roomed bunker would have been filled
mainly with council officers rather than members, with
the chief executive and the emergency planning
officer to the fore. Mr Bartholomew said: "The bunker
wasn't designed for more than 40 to 50 people, nor
was it designed for people to live in for more than 10
days. But the plan was to take 60 people down
there." "Certainly, after a fortnight we would have run
out of all sorts. "It would have been a pretty manky
sort of place, just a storeroom. It was so tatty. "All
the things down there were rejects from people's

4

Subterranea

News

homes and offices. "I wouldn't even want to sit down
on the chairs for more than ten minutes. "And the
telephone exchange that the whole project hinged on
for vital communications was like something out fo
the 1930s.

"While we were looking around down there, firemen
would practice hosing outside and water would slush
in through the air vents. It was very damp." "Special
insulation meant that the shelter was 100 times less
susceptible to radiation than on the outside and
should have withstood any building collapsing on it."
None of Buckinghamshire's original three bunkers
exist today - despite the growing threat of terrorist
attacks from al-Qa'eda. The Milton Keynes shelter
was decommissioned ten years ago following the end
of the Cold War.

Security firm buys Cold War bunker

Kelly Smith said the four-level windowless structure,
which has reinforced concrete walls up to 15ft thick,
was ideal for their needs. Mr Smith said; "When you
say nuclear bunker, people think of a dark, dingy
room which is pretty oppressive with water running
down the walls. It's the sort of property that's
completely useless for 99.9% of businesses but
priceless for 0.1% "But it's got high ceilings and big
rooms and the whole place is very light and airy." It
has been estimated that the facility would cost £23m
if it were built today. "The big plus point from an
electrical security point of view is that there's no
possibility of eavesdropping or radio interference,"
The 30,000-square-foot underground bunker, which
was built in total secrecy 50 years ago and has about
21,000 square feet of usable office space, has its
own back-up generators and air conditioning system.
Employees will enter the facility from a tunnel and a
surface guard house which leads to the underground

The Former Nuclear Bunker at Skendleby - Photo by Dan McKenzie

A former nuclear bunker built to protect key
government officials during the Cold War has
been sold to a computer security firm.

Centrinet, a computer systems security company that
has clients in Moscow and Beijing as well as former
Eastern Bloc countries, has bought the bunker in
Skendleby, Lincolnshire.

The former bunker was listed for sale at £400,000.
The firm's 27 staff will relocate to their unusual new
offices within the next 12 months from their current
home in Waterside South, Lincoln. Centrinet director

offices. The building was designed to house 130 key
government and military personnel for up to three
months in the event of a nuclear attack.

The Home Office undertook a £15m refurbishment of
the facility in 1983 but it was decommissioned and
declassified after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It
has since been owned by several businessmen until
it went on the market, attracting about 30 potential
buyers and seven offers.

Centrinet's clients include airlines, banks and
government departments in more than 42 countries

worldwide._ story from BBC NEWS

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Subterranea

Books

Underground Wimbledon
Underground Wimbledon by Ruth Murphy -
extract from the newsletter of the Wandsworth
Historical Society 1995

To many people the mention of underground
Wimbledon would conjure up nothing more than
visions of the Northern Line tube trains but there are
several secret tunnels under the town which though
built for various purposes many years ago, still exist
today.

One thought to be associated with the Old Rectory,
the oldest house in Wimbledon, is said to run out
from an area beneath what is now Wimbledon Park
Gold Course to the Well House in Arthur Road. The
tunnel was investigated by the Chelsea Speleological
Society in 1984 but was found to date back no further
than the 18th century so it cannot have been built in
the time of the Old Rectory which was constructed
around 1500. The tunnel is just two feet wide and
three and a half feet high with brick floor and walls
and an arched roof.

There is a brick chamber under the garden of 124
Home Park Road from which the tunnel extends in
one direction about 270 feet to the golf course and in
the other about 100 feet along Home Park Road. The
tunnel has never been completely explored but if
extended along its easterly course would reach the
site of the Duchess of Marlborough's house which
was later incorporated into the Spencer’s manor
house.

Although it is sometimes assumed that old tunnels
were used for secret escape routes and other
clandestine activities the more likely explanation in
this case is that the tunnel would have been used for
drainage purposes - taking water from the house to
Wimbledon Park Lake. Another tunnel which runs
under the Ricards Lodge playing fields to what is now
Park House School was built to link the Duchess of
Marlborough’s house with the servants’ quarters. This
enabled the servants to reach the house without
spoiling the landscape. The tunnel is constructed of
arched brickwork and is six feet wide and eighty feet
long.

Both tunnels were discovered by accident. The first
by Councillor Kenyan who, whilst mowing the lawn in
his garden at 124 Home Park Road in the mid
1980’s, fell into the tunnel as the ground gave way
under his feet. The second was discovered in similar
circumstances when a bulldozer clearing the
Spencer’s manor house site for the building of Park
House School disappeared from view and landed in
the basement.Just outside Wimbledon another tunnel
runs under Merton High Street. Starting underneath

the Lord Nelson Pub which was the site of the
entrance of Lord Nelson’s estate, the tunnel runs to
Haydon’s Road. Built for Lord Nelson, it was in effect
an early example of a pedestrian subway, linking the
main estate to the nearby stables.

Fortress Lowestoft; Lowestoft At War
1939-1945

by Robert Jarvis, Published by The Heritage
Workshop Centre, 80 High Street, Lowestoft, Suffolk
NR321XN. Cost £9.95 plus £2.00 Post and Packing
from publishers.

Robert Jarvis BSc, is the curator of the Lowestoft
War Memorial Museum that opened in 1995 to serve
as a permanent memorial to the citizens of Lowestoft
who died during the First and Second World Wars
and also to the members of the armed forces who
served in Lowestoft.

His interest in military history and archaeology dates
from his childhood when he spent many Sunday
evenings exploring the underground magazines of
the Pakefield coastal defence battery and collecting
items of military from specialist collectors’ fairs
around the region.

In researching local military history which has
intensified during the last few years resulting in his
latest book, ’Fortress Lowestoft’. This A4 size book
with 124pp and 57 illustrations / photos brings all the
necessary in formation from abbreviations to a potted
history of the background to WWII is to hand in the
front.

In the main the book is well written with a number of
photographs and diagrams along with maps showing
the sites in and around this seaside town. The Author
has devoted each chapter to a certain type of
defence i.e. Coastal Artillery, Home Guard & the
Navy (of course), nor is the RAF forgotten or those
who worked ’underground’. At the end the book their
are some of the sites that remain with their national
grid references along with the Authors sources in the
bibliography.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in the a
good account of local military matters, it contains
many drawings and photographs useful in Wartime
Research.

Robert is currently writing ’Chariots of The Lake’. A
book that details the wartime history of the specialist
amphibious armour training facility at Fritton Lake, in
Suffolk, where the crews of famous 79th Armoured
Division’s Duplex Drive tanks carried out their initial
training, learning how to handle a tank on the calm
surface of the Lake. The training facility was still
operational D-Day and a many units trained on
experimental amphibious armour there.

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Subterranea

Books

Nottinghamshire Miners Taies,

A5 pb 93pp Available from Mike Moore at Moore
Books Cost £7.95 plus £1.00 Post and Packing from
Moore Books

This one is a bit of a gem. Yes it records memories of
working in the pits both modern and pre
nationalisation what do like is all backed up with
some very nice black and White and Colour photos of
surface and underground most of which is now lost.
There is a very good photo of Clipstone Headgear
and sadly a record of the demolition of Hucknall No 2.

The Mines Rescue team feature very heavily again
with photos and good well written text regarding
accidents they had to cope with along with their
attitudes to strikes and pit closures.

Inevitably there is a chapter is dedicated to the 1984 /
5 dispute which brought bitterness to the County
along with Union divisions. There now only 4 pits
surviving and the outlook seems bleak. This book
helps to keep some of the memories alive of the
communities, working conditions and methods.

Subterranean Southwark

by Christopher Jones A5 PB, 118pp Available for
£3.50 plus P+P (add 50p) from: Past Tense
Publications, do 56a Infoshop, 56 Crampton St,
LONDON, SE17 3AE Cheques payable to
Christopher Jones

Letter to the Editor

Whilst on holiday recently in Rio de Janeiro, I came
across the Fort on the headland that separates
Ipanema beach from Copacabana beach. It is now a
free museum and has various artillery pieces on
display, and an exhibition of uniforms, arms and
equipment in several two storey buildings, that I
assume were previously barracks and administration
offices.

Built in the mid 19'^ century the fort has been
upgraded and re-armed and equipped over the
ensuing years. The fort now has a pair of 200mm and
a pair of 305mm, Krupp guns, which can fire their 445
kg shells over 12 miles.

The guns in their turrets, which project above the top
of the roof of the fort, a la Maginot Line, the counter
weights and control mechanism have been preserved
in perfect condition, as has the shell store, with its
racks of shells, overhead chain hoist and transport
rails in the ceiling, the magazine with shell cases
awaiting their propellant charges and the shell hoist

Published by Past Tense Publications,
SUBTERRANEAN SOUTHWARK is a 120 page
booklet covering most of the underground structures
and oddities of the London Borough of Southwark
area. A full review will appear in the next issue of
Subterranea.

Table of Contents:

Introduction and map

Subways - Utility and Pedestian (Southwark St,
Tower Bridge Rd, Elephant and Castle and more)
Underground Toilets -A complete in-depth history of
the borough's many Victorian and Edwardian
underground W.C's

Civil Defence - in-depth chapter on WW2 and Cold
War nuclear bunkers in Cambenwell, Walworth and
Bermondsey

Crypts and Catacombs - Numerous churches
covered and the old catacombs of Nunhead
Cemetery

Underground Water - the rivers Neckinger, Peck
and Earl's Sluice plus numerous Wells and Spas;
Honor Oak and Nunhead reservoirs; the London
Hydraulic Power Company; Artesian Wells; High
Level and Low Level Intercepting Sewers
Thames Tunnels - Thames Archway, Tower Subway
and Rotherhithe tunnel

Underground Railways - Disused Northern Line,
London Rd Bakerloo Depot and Kennington Loop;
complete guide to all the Emergency Exits and Vents
of the Jubille Line Extension in Southwark
Haywards and Co. - pavement lights and coal plates
Rumours and Remnants inc. Tate Modern plus
numerous other snippets

Full index and bibliographies, Many illustrations and
diagrams

- Copacabana Fort

to the guns. The generator room with a pair of Krupp
guns V12 diesel engines, the hydraulic pump room,
the plotting room with its old slide rules and circular
calculators, the various commanders and personnel
offices, the dormitories and toilet and washing
facilites are all on display and are all in excellent
condition, these areas are not purely utilitarian, with
contrasting patterns in the mosaic tiling, decorative
grills in the washrooms and period lights and door
furniture.

A display of light automatic weapons and mortars
from various periods and stages of development and
much explanatory text, albeit in Portuguese, but
understandable if you have a basic grasp of Spanish
or Latin, round out a very nice little fort, in a glorious
setting with the wide sandy beaches stretching away
for three miles either side, Atlantic surf at its feet and
the rain forest covered mountains behind.

Roger Cleaver

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Subterranea

Baghdad Express

A subway planned for Iraq’s capital was never built-
or was it? Saddam’s biggest secret may be a weapon
of mass transit.

Nothing undermines technical surveillance like an
underground facility—and the rogue powers know it.
Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya, and al Qaeda all made
extensive use of the Subterranea to frustrate our
remote study of their secret facilities. Now there are
rumours of a massive complex of tunnels under
Baghdad, a possible storage location for clandestine
chemical and biological weapons.

The latest revelation comes from Dr. Hussein
Shahristani, the former head of the Iraqi Atomic
Energy Commission, who escaped in 1991, but has
continued to sneak back into Iraq to aid rebels. In an
interview with CBS News, he
said that there are over 100
kilometres of tunnels under
Baghdad, laid according to the
plans for a public subway, but
converted to military use. His
knowledge is hearsay (he had
direct contact with only one
person who worked in the
tunnels) but plausible. The
United Nations inspectors had
heard rumors of such a system,
but have never been able to
locate it. Tunnels are relatively
cheap, and extremely effective
for hiding weapons and people.

Tunnelling for military purposes
is almost as ancient as war
itself. Originally, to "undermine"
was to breach or destroy a
military wall from below.

Explosives placed in such mines
eventually adopted the name
mine for themselves. The United
States began the modern era of
large, deeply buried facilities
with the completion of the Cheyenne Mountain
complex in 1965 to hold the Operations Centre for
the North American Air Defence Command. The
man-made cavern was deep enough to survive a hit
by a small nuclear bomb. It holds 15 spring-
suspended buildings, eleven of which are three
stories high. It holds resources to sustain 800 people
for 30 days. By that time the nuclear war would
presumably be over.

Despite its own leadership in the underground, the
military was shocked in 1974 by an inadvertent
discovery. Soldiers near the demilitarised zone
separating North and South Korea noticed steam
leaking from the ground. They dug down, hoping to
find a hot spring, but discovered instead a tunnel that
came from the north under the DMZ and extended

over a kilometre into South Korea. It was made of
reinforced concrete and had electric power and
narrow-gauge rails. Three additional tunnels have
subsequently been found, the most recent one in
1990. It is 145 meters below ground, 2 meters
square. If used during a war, it could have conveyed
a full division of troops every hour, including
equipment. Nobody knows how many undetected
tunnels still penetrate the DMZ. They are not easy to
find. (Photos of the tunnels can be found online in an
excerpt from Major General John Singlaub’s book
Hazardous Duty.) Once, large tunnels were dug by
heroic miners called "sand hogs" who blasted with
dynamite and dug with pick and shovel. Today, the
tunnels are ground and scraped by tunnel boring
machines, 150-ton monsters that resemble the giant

Baghdiid(Imq) Subway—Planned Line Map

• Line I (under construction)
Line I (planned)

- Line 2(planned)

^ Thawra

4

^ Une 1

Aadhamiva

♦ ' «

. 9

#

#

• Une 2

♦ Masbah

Tigris

•'

Mansour

worms of Frank Herbert's novel Dune. These
massive vehicles can dig up to 75 meters per day in
soft earth, but only a few meters per day in granite. A
set of tunnel borers dug the Chunnel in three years.
When they finished, the machines were left near the
middle, buried deep under the English Channel. It
was too expensive to back them out.

In the early 1990s, Libya began construction of a vast
underground "fertilizer factory" near the town of
Tarhunah. It isn't clear why such a factory need be
underground; the U.S. suspected it was designed to
make chemical weapons. Indeed, in 1996 two
German businessmen were convicted of exporting
chemical warfare equipment to the plant. U.S.
Secretary of Defence William Perry told Congress
that he would consider using "the whole range of

8

Subterranea

Baghdad Express

American weapons" to keep the facility from
completion. Libya halted construction shortly
afterwards.

There were once plans for a public subway system
beneath the streets of Baghdad, but it was never
built—unless you believe Shahristani. He says that
Saddam took over the project to construct a massive
military complex under the city. Its 100 kilometres of
tunnels are supposedly used not for transportation,
but for military operations, and to conceal Saddam's
illegal weapons and materials.

Such tunnels are remarkably difficult to locate. In
remote regions, the adits (entrances) can sometimes
be spotted when debris is hauled away. If the tunnels
are in use, you can spot the infrared emissions from
their warmth. You can find them using ground-
penetrating radar if they aren't too deep and the
ground is dry and uniform. In prior inspections in Iraq
such radar found buried missile parts that had been
smuggled from Russia. When the UN inspection
teams returned to Iraq last November, they brought
with them radar systems capable of penetrating the
dry desert to depths of 10 meters.

All these methods are essentially useless in city
clutter. Adits can be hidden in warehouses; dirt can
be hauled away through city streets without drawing
attention. The clutter of underground structures in city
streets makes ground-penetrating radar and infrared
sensors worthless. Information comes only from
humint (human intelligence), the gleaning of
information from those willing to tell. To keep such
secrets secret, you simply forbid interviews with
people who know.

Even if the inspectors found tunnels under Baghdad,
they would have trouble probing them. Forbidden
passageways are easily camouflaged with piles of
rubble. Weapons stores can be permanently loaded
on rail, and moved kilometres at a moment's notice,
with no danger of overhead observation. As every

spelunker learns, the three dimensions of an
underground complex make it hard to even find your
way out, let alone explore and inspect. It is hard to
know where you are; the Global Positioning System
doesn't work underground. Theseus found his path
back out of the Labyrinth only by unravelling a thread
(a gift from his girlfriend Ariadne) behind him when he
entered. The U.S. Naval Air Systems Command
takes the problem so seriously that it has established
a Tunnel Warfare Centre near China Lake, CA, to
train soldiers in underground movement and combat.

I don't know if the Baghdad subway exists, or—if it
does—whether the U.S. government knows its
layout. Shahristani says that an American firm
designed part of the system. Did Saddam follow the
original design? According to CBS News, those plans
are now in U.S. possession. If that is true, then it
must have been a difficult decision by the United
States to keep the plans secret from the U.N.
inspectors. Had the United States showed the plans,
Saddam would have learned the limits of our
knowledge. That would be invaluable to him if the war
reaches Baghdad.

We know that Saddam does have some structures
deep under Baghdad. A member of the British
Parliament said that when he took an elevator to
meet Saddam underground, it went so far down that
his "ears popped." A complex subway under
Baghdad is just what Saddam needs—for illegal
weapons storage, and—if necessary—for his
personal escape. He could afford to build such a
complex. And if he didn't build this subway, the
question becomes, why not?

Richard A. Muller, a 1982 MacArthur Fellow, is a
professor in the Physics Department at UC-Berkeley
where he teaches a course entitled, "Physics for
future Presidents." Fie is also a faculty senior scientist
at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

Trust the Swiss to be ready. And waiting . . .

Max Davidson takes a guided tour of Switzerland's
Civil Defence bunkers

Not so long ago, it was the threat of a nuclear
holocaust that gave us the shivers; today, it is some
chemical or biological nasty. But whichever way you
look at it, right now Switzerland seems the safest
place to be.

During the Cold War, the country was the wise virgin
of Europe. While the rest of us put our faith in bombs,
bombs and Ronald Reagan, the peace-loving Swiss
embarked on a programme of civil defence without
parallel in world history. In the event of nuclear war in
Europe, all Swiss citizens were to have access to a
shelter in which they could survive the fall-out. Then

the Soviet Union collapsed and everyone breathed a
little easier. But today we have the likes of Saddam
and Osama. So what price the shelters now?

For individual home-owners, the answer is about
£1,000. That is roughly the surcharge they have to
pay for their nuclear shelter when they buy their
home. Some have their own shelter, others must pay
for access to a neighbouring one. But in either event,
the home-owner has to foot the bill; people who rent
their homes escape the surcharge.

The system is riven with anomalies and has only
survived this long because home-ownership in
Switzerland, for all its economic prosperity, is
relatively uncommon; at 31 per cent, owner-

9

Subterranea

Trust the Swiss to be ready. And waiting . . .

occupation is far
lower than in the
wealthier countries
of the European
Union.

As the
threat
here

rumblings
discontent from

nuclear
receded,
were
of
the

cantons and a
review of civil
protection laws was
instituted to
examine the
»financial burdens
imposed on home-
^ owners, along with
a range of other

issues. The review is due for completion this year.
Back in Britain, as the scare stories about a possible
terrorist attack began to proliferate, my mind went
back to a meeting I had in Switzerland about 18
months ago with Philippe Krahenmann, of the
Federal Office for Civil Protection.

"War is not the theme any more," he told me. "We
only train for disasters." People who used to lie
awake at night worrying about nuclear annihilation
now focus on lesser catastrophes - earthquakes,
flooding, influxes of refugees - and these days, no
doubt, terrorist attacks.

We met under the clock at Berne station, like Cold
War spies. I was clutching a well-thumbed copy of P
G Wodehouse, Philippe a placard reading
"Partnership for Peace". A quick hand-shake, a half-
hour drive through the Alps and we reached
Schwarzenberg, home of the Federal College for
Emergency Planning.

Half an hour later, I was sitting in a darkened briefing
room at one of the two Partnership for Peace
conferences held every year, surrounded by
Armenians, Estonians, Slovakians and a perkily
dressed delegation from the Cameroon. Our briefing
packs - and who said the Swiss have no sense of
humour? - included a packet of sticking-plasters.
Post-briefing, we trooped around the main nuclear
shelter for Schwarzenberg, located in the basement
of the college and offering space for about 150
people. Watched by bemused delegates, Philippe
demonstrated the air-lock doors, proof against
chemical warfare, the gas filters and the showers to
be used in case of nuclear contamination. At the end,
rather sportingly, he perched on one of the dry toilets
and gave a demonstration. The woman from Armenia
got the giggles.

As a place of residence, the shelter fell a long way
short of the pretty Alpine chalets dotted around the
village. The kitchen was basic and the sleeping
quarters spartan, with cheek-by-jowl triple-decker

bunks. Even the command post, with its faded maps
and pre-war telephone exchange, was more
homespun than state-of-the-art. But it was certainly
not a rat-hole. People could survive here for weeks.
That is the whole point of the shelter. Or it was.

In 1971, the federal government embarked on a
programme to ensure that, by the end of the century,
every inhabitant in the country would have a shelter
in which they could survive the effects of nuclear or
chemical attack. New buildings had to incorporate
shelters. But the ending of the Cold War took much of
the impetus out of the programme. Spending on civil
protection fell by two-thirds in the 1990s.

Although new buildings continued to incorporate
shelters, provision remained patchy. One huge
shelter in a tunnel in Lucerne, with space for 17,000,
has been deemed unsuitable for the purpose; but
today it is hard to see the political will, or the money,
being found to replace it.

The biggest shelter in Berne is a vast subterranean
labyrinth underneath an ice hockey stadium. It was
built in the late 1960s, when Russian troops were
marching into Czechoslovakia and memories of the
Cuban missile crisis were still fresh, and it captures
the Zeitgeist of that era.

If the thinking behind the shelter has been
superseded by events, it has not become otiose as a
building. With basic accommodation for more than
1,000 people, it is still used for a miscellany of
purposes, from army barracks to reception area for
refugees. It was particularly busy during the Kosovo
war and during major sporting events in Berne it
functioned as a b & b hostel.

Shelters doubling as underground garages are also
popular. I visited one such garage, on a new housing
estate in Berne, with space for more than 700 people.
Come disaster and out will go the Saabs and
Peugeots, up will go the bunk-beds and, provided
that someone remembers to close the door, the
residents will be as safe as a Swiss bank account.
The shelters have brought out not just the native
caution of the Swiss but also their ability to adapt to
changing circumstances. I met pensioner Willy
Stauffer at his home in a block of flats in the outskirts
of Berne. As the building dates from the 1980s, it has
the obligatory nuclear shelter in the basement.

When I saw it, the shelter was stuffed floor to ceiling
with junk from the flats above. There were skis and
tool-boxes and ironing-boards and bicycles and work¬
benches and filing-cabinets and piles of old
newspapers. Best of all, there was wine, rack upon
rack of it. The temperature in the shelter, Willy told
me, made it the ideal wine-cellar.

It sounds awful to say it, but one almost wanted the
sky to start raining bombs, just to imagine Willy holed
up in his bunker, drinking his way through the
Cabernet Sauvignon

Property Telegraph (Filed: 12/04/2003)

10

Subterranea

The Post Office Railway (Mail Rail)

The first proposal for a tube line to carry the mail was
put forward by Rowland Hill in 1855; he suggested a
line from the Post Office at St. Martins-le-Grand to
Little Queen Street in Holborn. The initial proposal
was for an atmospheric railway’ designed by Thomas
Rammell who came up with a scheme by which a
stationery steam engine would drive a large fan
which could suck air out of an air tight tube and draw
the vehicle towards it or blow air to push them away.

A smaller version of this system was later developed
for message handling in large department stores and
government offices.

He devised plans for a number of lines in London to
carry goods and the Royal Mail setting up the
Pneumatic Despatch Company on 30th June 1859.

In May 1861 an experimental 452 yard line was laid
in Battersea. This proved to be successful and lines
were proposed from Camden and Euston stations to
carry parcels for the LNWR. The Post Office were
initially luke warm about the scheme although they
agreed to try out the new system once it had been
built.

The first 2’ gauge line was built in a shallow cut and
cover tunnel from the Arrival Parcels Office at Euston
to the Post Office’s North Western District Office in

Crowndale Road, a distance of 600 yards, the first
train running on 15 Jan 1863. After an inspection by
Post Office Secretary Sir Rowland Hill, the new
service was approved and a permanent service
introduced with 70 trains a day making the 70 second
journey.

With the undoubted success of this first line a longer,
3’ 8 'A “ line was proposed running from Euston to
245 Holborn and then on to the General Post Office
at St. Martins-le-Grand and Pickford's depot in
Gresham Street.

The section from Euston to Holborn was opened on
10th October 1865 but the extension to St. Martin le
Grand proved problematic with a limited service
finally opening on 1st December 1873, the extension
to Gresham Street was later dropped.

The Post Office were not satisfied with this new
service as it only shaved 4 minutes off the time taken
to carry the mail by road. In 1874 they announced
that they would not be using the new line and it was
quickly abandoned and the Pneumatic Despatch
Company was dissolved. The terminus at the
General Post Office became a coal and wood store
and other parts of the tunnel were put to other uses.
Iln 1895 there was a proposal to reopen the tunnel
with electric traction and a new company, the London

11

Subterranea

The Post Office Railway (Mail Rail)

Despatch Company was formed. Some work was
done on upgrading the line and tunnels but the Post
Office remained sceptical about its worth and work on
the new project ceased in 1902 and the London
Despatch Co was wound up in 1905. The Post Office
finally bought the tunnel in 1921 to use for telephone
cables. Several sections of the tunnel have been lost
over the years but about three quarters of it is still in
use carrying cables. On the 20th June 1928 an
explosion in the tunnel under High Holborn was
blamed on the ignition of coal gas, one workman was
killed. During the subsequent excavations to repair
half a mile of damaged road, four of the original cars
were discovered, unfortunately these were not
preserved. The same year some of the cars from the
2' gauge Crowndale Road line were uncovered
during road works at Euston, one of these is now on
display at the Bruce Castle Museum at Tottenham
and another, which was cut into two halves recover it,
is on display in the Museum of London.

With the demise of the pneumatic line, electric
railways seemed a more versatile means of transport
for the mail and numerous proposals were made for
new underground electric lines even before the
pneumatic railway had closed. In 1909 a committee
was set up to consider all the alternative schemes
and eventually they recommended an 2' gauge twin
electric line in a 70 foot deep tunnel running from
Paddington District Office to the Eastern District
Office in Whitechapel Road with intermediate stations
at Western Parcels Office in Barrett Street, Western
District Office in Wimpole Street, the West Central
District Office in New Oxford Street, the main London
sorting office at Mount Pleasant, King Edward
Building in King Edward Street and the Great Eastern
Railway Station at Liverpool Street, a total length of
six miles. Further extensions were also suggested
but these were never built. The total length of track
including sidings and loops was 23 miles.

Each station would have a wide island platform with
sufficient room for loading and unloading and a loop
line to leave the main line clear for through running.
The suggested line capacity was 40 trains an hour in
each direction. The Post Office remained sceptical
about whether the line would achieve any real
savings over road transport.

The recommendations were however approved and a
bill was put before parliament on 15th August 1913.
An experimental length of line was built the following
year and in 1915 Mowlems were given a 15 month
contract to build the new line. All the running tunnels
were completed towards the end of 1917 but the
contractors were ordered to suspend work on the
stations because of problems with labour and
materials during the war. With the danger of Zeppelin
air raids the completed tunnels were considered a

suitable place for the storage of art treasurers and in
January 1918 much of the collection from the Tate
Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and the Public
Record Office were stored in the station tunnel at
King Edward building. The King’s pictures and the
Wallace collection were stored in the tunnel at
Paddington Station.

Work on the line resumed in 1920 and tests on the
first completed section between Paddington and
West Central District Office began on 24th January
1927 with the first scheduled parcel service between
Paddington and Mount Pleasant running on 3rd of
December. The final section between Liverpool
Street and the Eastern District Office received its first
traffic on 2nd January 1928 and the first letter traffic
was carried by the railway on 13th February 1929.
The main line runs in a single tube, 9 feet in
diameter, diverging at each station into two parallel
tunnels, 7 feet in diameter, widening out at the
stations to 25 feet. For most of it’s length the line runs
at 70 feet below ground with a 1 in 20 rise and fall at
each station which helps to slow the trains down as
they approach a station and aids acceleration away
from a station.

By the 1st March 1928 the line had achieved its
intended maximum capacity. There were initial
teething problems both with the track and the rolling
stock but these were eventually ironed out and by
1932 a regular reliable service was achieved.

With the threat of war in the late 1930’s it was
decided to use the stations as staff shelters and
these were brought into use in 1939 with hinged
bunks that lowered onto the platforms and track. The
stations were last used as an air raid shelter in 1944
but the dormitories remained in use until September
1945. The use of the stations as night shelters meant
there was a reduction in the running hours on the line
with the railway closing between 11pm and 7 am.

The railway itself suffered little damage during the
war; the most serious incident being on 18th June
1943 when a direct hit destroyed the parcel block at
Mount Pleasant and flooded the station.

After the war there were further plans to extend the
railway with braches to Euston and Kings Cross but
no new lines were ever built. There was however a
quarter mile deviation to the existing line with a new
Western District office at Rathbone Place and a new
station beneath it, opening on 3rd August 1965. The
stations serving the Western Parcels Office and the
Original Western District Office were closed at the
same time. The disused sections of tunnel are now
used as a store with some track remaining in place.
The car depot an workshops are at Mount Pleasant
where there is space to store 81 of the original 90

12

Subterranea

The Post Office Railway (Mail Rail)

cars although they are usually stabled at various
points along the line to avoid the necessity to run
back to the depot at the end of each working day. All
maintenance of the stock is carried out in the
workshop that also acts as a base for tunnel and
track maintenance. There is also a shaft for lifting
rolling stock in and out of the yard adjoining Phoenix
Place. The three tracks into the depot are reached by
reversing from the top of the incline up from Mount
Pleasant Station.

Initially the railway ran 22 hours a day with staff
working in three shifts, the two hours when the line
was not in operation was used by the maintenance
team, larger maintenance jobs being carried out on
Sundays when the line was closed. The service has
now been reduced to 19 hours a day, 286 days a
year.

In recent years King Edward Building and the West
Central District Office in New Oxford Street have
been closed and sold with all links between the
buildings and the stations below being sealed off.
The station at Liverpool Street has also closed
leaving just four stations, Paddington Sorting Office,
the Western Delivery Office at Rathbone Place,
Mount Pleasant Sorting Office and the Whitechapel
Eastern Delivery Office.

Although initially hailed as a great success, in the last
quarter of the 20th Century the line has been

continually losing money and on 7th November 2002
Royal Mail announced that the whole line had
become uneconomical with losses of E1.2M a day.
Unless a new backer and new uses could be found
the line would close in the near future.

In early 2003 it was announced that the line from
Mount Pleasant to the Eastern Delivery Office will
close on 21st March 2003 and the remaining section
from the Western District Office at Paddington to
Mount Pleasant will be mothballed on the 29th March

2003. The sorting office
at Paddington will also
be closed and be
relocated to Rathbone
Place. There will be no
compulsory
redundancies with staff
taking voluntary
retirement or
redundancy or being
redeployed elsewhere in
the industry.

Until a few years ago it
was possible for
interested groups to visit
the railway but with new
Health and Safety
regulations these visits
were discontinued.
However with the
announced closure of
the line, 15th March
2003 was set aside for
one final open day with
120 people being shown
round Mount Pleasant
Station in Groups of 8.
Subterranea Britannica was able to secure one of
these tours and at 12 noon we gathered outside the
administration entrance in Farringdon Road. We were
taken up to the 2nd floor briefing room where we
were shown a short video while we waited for our
guides to return from the previous tour. 20 minutes
later having walked along the labyrinth of corridors at
Mount Pleasant we descended to platform level by lift
which opens into a short cross passage at the
eastern end of the two platforms, each 313 feet long.

We moved first onto the eastbound platform where
one of the 1980’s driverless Greenbat Locomotives
with four mail wagons was standing at the eastern
end the platform, ready for loading. Each loaded train
cannot move off until a signal is given from the
platform and we all had an opportunity to press a
button (cherry) above our heads and watch the empty
train disappear into the tunnel where it ran around a
loop to re-emerge on the westbound platform. One of

13

Subterranea

The Post Office Railway (Mail Rail)

three emergency battery locomotives was also on
display on the platform loop. These are permanently
stationed at various points on the railway.

Since 1981 the railway has taken its power from the
National Grid feeding five sub-stations along the line.
There is a central conductor rail at 440 volts DC
which allows speeds of up to 40 mph in the tunnels.
In the stations the trains supply voltage is reduced to
150 volts which allows the trans to run at a maximum
speed of 7 mph

Vaughan computer and the old control system. The
new computer can control the entire system
automatically although it is still possible for the line
controller to override the computer and regain
manual control at each of the control cabins. We
were able to see the new control room at the end of
out tour.

Although our tour was officially limited to 40 minutes,
as it was the last one before lunch this was extend to
an hour with no restrictions on photography. Although

The old manual control
room with its illuminated
track diagram, describer
board and 56 lever frame is
located between the
platforms and is kept in
good usable condition. Until
1993 each station had it’s
own line controller. His job
was to control all train
movements at the station,
sending trains into the
station or routing them via
the loop on to the next
station.

Each panel was
mechanically and
electrically interlocked. As
the train approached the
station there is a break in
the conductor rail that
causes the train to stop.

The station controller could
then take over control by
using the receiving lever
which controlled the motor
with a selection of relays, each applying a different
voltage to control the trains speed into the platform
without having to apply brakes. Once in the station
there was another dead section of rail which brought
the train to a halt and applied the brakes.

there was one member of staff to every two of us to
ensure nobody wandered off into the tunnels, we
were given the freedom of the platforms and control
room with knowledgeable members of staff around to
answer a plethora of questions.

The manual controls became redundant in 1993
when a new central computer operated control room
was brought on line on the third floor of Mount
Pleasant. There is a direct interface between the

Those Present: Nick Catford, Dan McKenzie, Robin
Ware, Robin Cherry, Bob Jenner, Tony Page

By Nick Catford

14

Subterranea

Home Security Region 5 (London) War Room

During WW2 No. 5 (London) Region Control Room
was located in a purpose built surface bunker in front
of the Geological Museum and adjacent to the
Natural History Museum at the junction of Exhibition
Road and Cromwell Road, London, S.W.7. The
bunker was ready for occupation by June 1939.

Prior to the outbreak of WW2, it was recognised that
an integrated civil defence service (called Air Raid
Precautions until 1941) would be required and that
the Home Office, the responsible department, would
need considerable augmentation. This resulted in the
creation of the Ministry of Home Security, to be
responsible for all civil defence matters. Fire and
Police services remained under the control of the
Home Office.

The country was divided into 12 civil defence regions,
each under a Civil Regional Commissioner.

1. Northern Region - HQ Newcastle

2. North Eastern Region - HQ Leeds

3. North Midland Region - HQ Nottingham

4. Eastern Region - HQ Cambridge

5. London Region - HQ London

6. Southern Region - HQ Reading

7. South Western Region - HQ Bristol

8. Wales Region - HQ Cardiff

9. Midland Region - HQ Birmingham

10. North Western Region - HQ Manchester

11. Scotland Region - HQ Edinburgh

12. South Eastern Region - HQ Tunbridge Wells

This system had its origins in the English Civil War
when Cromwell similarly divided the country and
placed his famous Major Generals in control of each
division. The Cold War administration follows on from
this practice.

The region that controlled London was designated
No. 5 Region and was responsible for what is now
Greater London but then consisted of the 28
Metropolitan Boroughs in the London County Council
(LCC) area together with the City of London plus the
County Boroughs of Croydon, East and West Ham
and the remaining urban a rural councils in Essex,
Middlesex, Surrey and Kent out to the boundary of
the Metropolitan Police District.

These authorities were collected into groups of
between 5 and 11 and placed under the control of
one of them (that selected authority therefore had two
controls within it, one local and one group). The inner
ring of LCC Boroughs were numbered No. 1 to No. 5
Groups, three north of the Thames and two south.
The outer ring of County Councils were numbered
No. 6 to No. 9 Groups. Two counties, Middlesex and
Surrey were further sub-divided into 6A to 6D for
Middlesex and 9A and 9B for Surrey.

Each council was run by an ARP/CD Controller
(usually the Chief Executive) responsible for civil
defence matters and control of incidents through the
network of civil defence wardens who acted as
incident control officers to co-ordinate rescue efforts.
Fire, Ambulance and Heavy Rescue units were
supplied by the LCC but under operational control of
the Controller.

Uniquely, within London, the Police had no civil
defence responsibility officially but many gallantry
awards were made to police officers acting in a
rescue capacity. In London the Fire Service reported
to their own Regional Fire Authority for assistance.

As mentioned above, one council in each group was
designated as Group HQ for that particular group and
was responsible for running not only its own rescue
efforts but to oversee and if necessary reinforce other
members of the group if needed. This HQ also
collated the group reports for upward transmission
and maintained the Group War Diary (as did each
council). Each Group HQ reported to the Regional
HQ at Kensington which oversaw the region as a
whole and provided inter Group reinforcement,
maintained the Regional War Diary and reported to
the ultimate authority, the Ministry of Home Security,
responsible for Inter Regional inforcement and
assistance and who had a complete and up to date
picture of what was occurring in the entire country.

The No 5 (London) Regional Fire Control was located
within Horseferry House, a large government building
in Horseferry Road, Westminster (this was not its
only location). The Ministry of Home Security War
Room was located variously in the basement of the
Home Qffice in Whitehall and later in the South
Rotunda in Monck Street, a few yards from
Horseferry House. A reserve war room was located in
Cornwall House, a multi government department
building in Waterloo Bridge Road.

After the war the London war room was sealed and
remained so until 1976 when the land was required
for an extension to the Natural History Museum. The
external walls were found to be 6 feet thick which
made demolition difficult and expensive. It was
therefore decided to incorporate the into the new
extension with more storeys being added on the roof
and a further building added to the front of the bunker
on the site of an old tennis court. The rear wall was
clad in brick in line with the rest of the new extension
and is no longer recognisable.

The original entrance to the bunker was from the
basement of the Geological Museum where a tunnel
sloped down into the control centre. This tunnel was
removed during the new development and the area
between the Geological Museum and the new

15

Subterranea

Home Security Region 5 (London) War Room

extension is now a service road. The bunker is now
accessed at either end by the original stairs that can
now be accessed from the extension.

The bunker is now used by the Museum's
palaeontology department and two large rooms,
running the length of the bunker are now stacked with
movable shelving containing boxes of human bones
excavated from sites around the country. It is unclear
whether these rooms were originally this size. The
position of wooden doors between the two rooms
suggests that there might have been partition walls
that have now been removed. These two rooms take
up two thirds of the bunker. The remaining third is
divided into four smaller rooms. Two of these are
plant room for the whole museum. There are two

Stanmore and the other to South London. Suddenly
there was a crackle and we were off. The voice would
say "London East Purple" or some other area, then
the other speaker started "London North Purple",
then we'd get "London West Red" and at the same
time "London West Purple" and before we knew what
was happening the speakers were both clearly giving
out at the same time the area and colour. We had a
red phone direct to Scotland Yard, this was a double
check, they also had their own system. We repeated
as received from the speakers and the warnings were
sounded accordingly. Then the incidents were
coming through, often before we had sent all the
colours to the police or teleprinted the information to
the Home Office. The incidents came in fast and
furious, what they wanted, how many trapped etc.

Eventually the speaker would sound all clear in
each area, the last incident was dealt with and all
was quiet - that raid was over. The next would
possibly come in a few hours but for the time
peace and a feeling of how dreadfully tired we
were.

original doors (one with steps up to it) into this room
and a third bricked up doorway. There was no access
to these rooms. As the bunker was known to have a
kitchen and toilets during the war, these might have
been located in one of these rooms. The other two
rooms have more shelves and a long work table
along one wall.

The following is a contemporary report on one girls
work in the bunker written by Florrie Cowley, a
Ministry of Home Security teleprinter operator.

No girl was allowed to leave the teleprinter room
until her relief arrived. Consequently it was great
to see one's partner. We worked in threes for
three shifts, 7 a.m. - 3 p.m., 3 p.m. - 11.p.m. and
11 p.m. - 7 a.m., fifteen days without a break then
four days off. If a member of the next shift was
delayed for any reason we had to work her shift
as well. The supervisor, who came on at 9 a.m.,
would work out a rota, sometimes taking a turn
himself, if a girl was going to be away for more
than a day. Often we left home during a terrible
raid with a tin hat on and a special pass so that the
wardens would let us through.

One of our other jobs was to send messages in code
on a special teleprinter, these were brought down by
a man in uniform. What they were and where they
came from we never knew but we knew they were
sent to the fighting forces. The messages didn't have
a single vowel and were sent in blocks of five letters.
We had to be very accurate, we dare not make a
mistake with what to us was a jumble as it might have
made the whole message read incorrectly.

'I remember the bunker consisting of one very large
room several large rooms and some smaller ones. In
one of the large rooms there were 10 girls sitting at
telephones, each one was a direct link with one of the
nine London groups.

At 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. we had to teleprint a complete
list of incidents in London and everything that was
being used. Nothing was ever sent over the bridges
(over the Thames), everyone stayed on their own
side.

We had two speakers on the wall one linked to

After the European war was over, I was asked to
transfer to the Ministry of Information as they thought
I was one of their best teleprinter operators. The MCI
occupied the University College Hospital training
college. This work was also interesting as we sent
Churchill's speeches before he ever made them. We
sent them in different languages to other countries. I
found Polish rather weary with lots of 'Z's, my little
finger was nearly worn out!'

By Bob Jenner (Historical information) and Nick
Catford

16

Subterranea

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Subterranea

Wiltshire Stone Quarry Railways in WWII

An article by Fred Tye. He has worked on the railway
for 30 years and currently works for an international
railway consultancy, engaged on several West Coast
main line projects. In this article the author follows the
quarrymen's own practice of calling ail stone
workings ‘quarries'. Some history of the quarries is
given, to allow the reader to understand how the
railways came to be associated with the quarries.
Some iater history is given to demonstrate how the
facilities in some cases survived until recently.

The author is mainly interested in the quarries
themselves, being originally a stonemason, and the
railway history is only a part of the greater industrial
and social history of them. Whilst numerous sources
have been used In compiling this article, the author
must take responsibility for any mistakes which may
have entered, and ask the reader's indulgence. At the
end are listed various things not connected with this
subject which have come to his attention during
research, which he hopes may interest the reader.

The majority of the quarries described are in
Wiltshire, and were used to obtain Bath Stone (oolitic
limestone).

The Bath area quarries have been worked since
before the Romans arrived. Chilmark quarry, which
worked a glauconitic Jurassic limestone, is believed
to have been worked since the Middle Ages, and
supplied the stone for Salisbury Cathedral, amongst
other buildings. Both stones are known to masons as
■freestones’ on account of their ability to be carved
into intricate shapes.

The main stone quarries discussed are:

• Tunnel, Copenacre, Hartham Park, Spring,
Browns (these were all used to form the largest
underground magazine in England,

• the Copenacre Central Ammunition Depot
(CAD)).

• Ridge, Park Lane, and Monks Park.

• Monkton Farleigh. (lying to the west of the
main group of mines)

• Chilmark. (alone, west of Salisbury)

Prior to the first military takeover of a stone mine
(Ridge Quarry in 1912), Ridge Quarry and Monks
Park Quarry were already joined to Corsham station
Down sidings by a narrow gauge 2ft 5T4in railway.
Spring Quarry’s narrow gauge (NG) line joined it at
the top of its incline down to the sidings. Copenacre’s
and Hartham Park’s NG railways ran south from
those quarries over a bridge over the Corsham Great

Western Railway (GWR) cutting to turn sharply east
to also join the incline. When added together these
NG railways totalled approximately QVi miles.

These NG railways came into being after the GWR
was completed, allowing the quarries to achieve
great economy in their transport costs.

Monkton Farleigh quarry’s NG line originated at the
Ashley Sidings on the GWR, situated below Ashley
Woods, before climbing up its mile-long double
tracked incline to the rim of the hill. Running forward
away from the edge of the hill, it then split in two,
going roughly east and west. The western branch
again bifurcated and ran into shallow cuttings before
entering adits into the western edge of the quarry.
The eastern branch also split, one branch running on
almost parallel with the edge of the hill for about a
third of a mile, the other branch turning to run south-
southeast to the head of a slope shaft, which brought
stone up out of the eastern side of the quarry.

Underground track

Monkton Farleigh mine. Although over 50 acres in
extent, it is unlikely that more than 2 to 2'/> miles of
track would have been in place at its greatest extent
when worked as a quarry.

Tunnel Quarry. A large quarry, its southern boundary
came almost to meeting Spring Quarry. Tunnel
Quarry may originally have had less than 2 miles of
NG underground track. An agreement with the GWR
for a siding to be provided, in broad gauge, which
they prolonged into their mine, by means of a new
adit driven from the GWR’s Corsham railway cutting
in 1844, adjacent to the eastern end of Box Tunnel,
resulted in a large growth in permanent underground
track leading to the transhipment platform. The
siding had a trailing connection to the Up Main line,
controlled by a ground frame. This siding still had
longitudinal timbers in 1904, despite gauge
conversion in 1875.

Surface track to the quarries

The NG track from Hudswell and Hartham Park
Quarries terminated at the Corsham Down sidings,
as did the NG track from Monks Park Quarry, Ridge
Quarry and Park Lane Quarry, all using the incline at
the west end of the sidings to descend to them. The
various NG sidings were interlaced with the BG ones,
to ease transhipment of the stone. This layout was
maintained after gauge conversion, and until the NG
was lifted.

In 1912, Ridge quarry was taken over by the War
Department (WD) under ‘Defence of the Realm’
regulations. The Military continued to use the NG
railway connecting it to Corsham Down siding. The
use of horses was abandoned, and small 0-4-0 diesel

18

Subterranea

Wiltshire Stone Quarry Railways in WWII

and petrol locomotives were used. It is recorded that
they could move some 500 tons of munitions a week
by this method. The maximum holding of munitions
during WWI is believed to have been some 16,000
tons. The two-foot gauge underground railway inside
Ridge quarry was extended during this first period of
military use to serve all areas of the mine.

A feature of Ridge Quarry is that it lies across a slip
fault. The difference in levels is approx 30 feet. As a
result the military engineers had to construct two
underground winch-powered inclines to enable
railway access to and from the lower part of the mine.
Two inclines were driven to allow greater working
versatility, and in case of a breakdown the removal of
ammunition from the quarry could still continue, albeit
at a lower rate.

After the First World War finished the WD retained
some of the quarries until they were certain that
hostilities were over, Ridge being retained until 1922.
Some of the quarries were released to the owner
almost straight away after this period, but a small
number remained in WD custody, used as
magazines.

In 1919 and again in 1920 the Committee on
Armament Supply Depots was discussing the
perceived need for secure underground depots, and
the need for any such depots to be efficient both in
receipt and dispatch of munitions. This may have
been the time when the need for railway connections
to any significant depot was realised. It was also
realised that the relatively small areas used before
would be inadequate.

In November 1934 Ridge quarry was inspected by
the Royal Engineers, to assess its usefulness, and at
the same the time the Bath Stone Group informed the
War Office of the existence of Tunnel Quarry, with its
rail connection.

In July 1935 the War Office (WO), the GWR and the
Bath Stone Group met at Corsham Station to discuss
a possible extension to the sidings there. Also in
August 1935 the Treasury gave permission for the
WO to buy both Ridge and Tunnel quarries for the
sum of £35,000, and by the November of that year
the WO was fully committed to primary munitions
storage being in underground magazines, mostly in
Wiltshire.

The Army had plans in place by 1936 to move the
contents and processes of Woolwich Arsenal into
Tunnel Quarry.

The quarries were altered extensively to allow
storage of munitions underground. The items stored
varied from ‘pyrotechnics’ (flares and the like) to TNT,

gun shells and propellant charges of almost every
conceivable calibre. Shells for the largest naval guns
could weigh almost a ton, and in some quarry floors
circles in the floors still bear witness to the weight of
the shells slowly crushing their way down into the
stone.

Tunnel Quarry was soon singled out for massive
underground development; indeed it finished WWII
as the largest single magazine in the country, part of
the CAD (Central Ammunition Depot) It was soon
realised that the standard gauge track adit
connection to the GWR’s main line had a drawback—
it had been constructed only for passage of the
quarry’s low stone wagons. A standard box wagon,
or steel bodied explosive wagon, could not be used in
it.

On 10* December 1935 the Royal Engineers met the
Bath and Portland Stone Co. to discuss raising the
roof height of the railway adit. In March 1938, over
two years after the height of the railway adit was first
discussed, a decision was finally reached. The WD
decided to raise the roof, rather than lower the floor
(as the stone company had advised them). In view of
the slight problems encountered with flooding in the
underground sidings area this was the right decision.

In 1936 the WD allocated three locomotives for use
within tunnel quarry. This number was decided on
after considering the amount of traffic anticipated
needing moving, and the requirement to always be
able to move it. The locomotives needed for the
traffic was two at the maximum munitions movement
that could possibly be handled by the quarries
infrastructure. The third locomotive allowed for
breakdowns and preventative maintenance.

At the planning stage it had been decided that the
maintenance of the locomotives would be carried out
underground, and so an underground three-road loco
shed was planned. This was built (almost) in the
‘roundhouse’ style. The second shed road was
positioned in line with the entrance, with the first and
third roads being at 90 degrees to the entrance, in
line with each other. The locos were transferred by
means of a turntable. It was built at the end of a short
siding that curved north from the main siding, just
east of the underground ammunition-loading
platform. All routine maintenance, or repairs to the
locomotives were carried out in the quarry; it was
only when a major overhaul was required that the
engines would have to be taken away for work to be
done on them.

The locomotives are believed to have been a Hunslet
0-6-0, an eight-cylinder diesel, developing 204BHP at
1200rpm, and two Fowler 0-4-0 types. They had
reduced cab heights, and the exhausts were

19

Subterranea

Wiltshire Stone Quarry Railways in WWII

conducted through water tanks, to remove the worst
of the exhaust’s contaminants.

In April 1936 the purchase of Ridge Quarry, Tunnel
Quarry and Eastlays Quarry was made, for the sum
of £47,000. The last quarry mentioned was not
railway-connected and its RAF munitions were
delivered and dispatched by lorry to Beanacre and
Lacock sidings.

In June 1936 the WD let a contract for various large
engineering works in Tunnel Quarry, including
“railway works at Thingley” (about one mile east of
Corsham station on the main line). The GWR had
resisted any further development of Corsham station
sidings, realising that the large amount of munitions
traffic involved would clog up their main lines for
many hours each day. Accordingly the WD had
decided to develop their own sidings, at land on the
north side of the railway, near Thingley Junction,
which is where the Bradford on Avon branch line
leaves the main line. The sidings had a road-to-rail
transfer shed, two reception sidings, and nine
sidings, with the normal runround facilities. A water
tank to supply the engines was erected on the down
side of the line nearly opposite the siding entrance,
the water being taken from local sources. It is not
believed that water-softening plant was ever installed
at Thingley.

Tracks underground

Within Tunnel Quarry conversion work proceeded at
a fast pace. Miles of 2ft gauge Decauville track was
soon laid and 500 one cubic yard tipping wagons
were obtained in which to move the vast amount of
spoil the WD would remove to make the quarry “fit for
purpose". A maximum of 54 battery and diesel locos
(!) were in use by the contractor at the peak of the
work. The confusion, and congestion, of managing
the traffic of such a network can only be guessed at.

The contractors tried various methods of loading the
stone waste into the NG tipping wagons, but it was
found that hand loading was as fast as any other, due
to the irregular nature of the waste. The stone debris
from within the quarry was transported to the
underground loading platform, where they were
transferred into GWR ten-ton steel sided and floored
engineering wagons, of the Grampus type. The spoil
trains were then pulled out of the quarry to the new
WD sidings at Thingley, where the tipped spoil was
used to build up the ground level for the sidings being
built there. The object in clearing the quarry
passages was to make the best possible use of the
many acres of space potentially available.

In December 1936 there was a serious roof slip in
Tunnel Quarry, necessitating emergency action to
secure the roof and ensure the safety of the adjacent
Box railway tunnel.

Between 1934 and 1936 every large quarry in the
Box and Corsham areas, with the exception of Clift
Mine, was acquired under emergency regulations.
Clift Mine was thought unsuitable for conversion as a
HE store, but it was used as a route for the
underground telephone cables emerging from the
underground government telephone exchange
situated at the west end of Spring Quarry
underground factory.

The WD entered into a private siding agreement for
Tunnel Quarry with the GWR on 16"’ March 1939,
formalising what up until then had been an informal
“understanding" dating from when work started on the
siding renovation in 1936.

The alterations made underground by the Royal
Engineers, including adding a second standard
gauge siding along the south face of the loading
platform (replacing the NG siding, which came
through Black Swan heading from the far western
side of the quarry) and a standard gauge siding
curving north away from the internal end of the
railway adit (to allow long trains to be shunted
underground). Both were completed in October 1939.

Conversion of Tunnel Quarry was not without
incident, as the at times overenthusiastic removal of
stone roof pillars (to be replaced with concrete ones
set out in a regular pattern) resulted in many acres of
roof, with its accompanying overburden, starting to
move ‘down slope' (the stone bedding is nominally at
3 degrees fall to the southeast). This threatened
imminent disaster, which was averted by the
construction of very large concrete roof ‘packs' at the
south edge of Tunnel Quarry, between it and the
nearby GWR’s Box railway tunnel.

The GWR was concerned about storage of massive
amounts of high explosive close to its tunnel, and the
WO agreed with the company how close to the tunnel
they would take their storage areas. The area
between the tunnel and the adjacent magazines was,
to a large extent, filled up with stone waste, or had
concrete walls built within it, in order to safeguard the
tunnel. This was in everyone's interest, as if Box
Tunnel had been lost due to any circumstances then
movement of military trains in the area would have
been severely hampered.

Alterations within the quarry culminated with several
large magazine “districts”. In the larger haulage
passages twin lines of 2ft gauge railway were laid.
Haulage power was provided by a system of
“endless” overhead moving ropes. The wagons were
attached to the hauling rope by a quick release clip
on the end of a draw bar angled up from the end of
the wagon, and it resembled a horizontal version of a
ski lift, as seen on many mountains. The wagons
were versatile, as they had rubber-tyred wheels that

20

Subterranea

Wiltshire Stone Quarry Railways in WWII

allowed them to be used both on and off the railway
track system.

Manual turntables were laid in each road where it
passed side passages, where the wagons (‘trolleys”
to the Military) could be detached, turned ninety
degrees, and pushed into the storage areas. As the
turntables abutted each other transversely a wagon
in a lateral passage could be pushed across both
turntables, if they were aligned, into the passage on
the opposite side of the main haulage.

Situated to the east of the underground loading
platform was a natural rift, which accepted the
seepage water which accumulated in the Eastern end
of the quarry, this led to a larger rift which went south,
passing under the floor of the Box railway tunnel.
This area was known as The Lake and it also took
the drainage water from the adjacent Spring Quarry
underground factory (lying just to the south.). The
support to the floor in Box Tunnel, where it crosses
over The Lake is still inspected by the Railtrack area
bridge examination contractor, although the author is
not aware of the allocated bridge number.

Although The Lake took most of the water, on
occasions the dip in the tracks between the loading
platform and the exit adit from the mine out to the
railway cutting was still occasionally flooded to a
depth of several inches above the top of the rails. As
mentioned previously, the military engineers were
right not to lower the floor level as advised by the
quarry owners.

Copenacre CAD did not take its final form until as late
as 1943, having been some eight years in gestation,
and it then had 125 acres of underground storage,
holding an estimated 300,000 tons of explosives and
ammunition.

It is arguable to say that Copenacre was the military
jewel in the crown’ so far as stores depots were
concerned. The WD took its defence seriously and
from early days it was closely guarded and not the
subject of any publicity. Many locals believed the
decoy story that it was a food dump. At first Home
Guard detachments, which were later replaced with
regular troops not required for other duties, guarded
it. In times its defence troops amounted to several
Regiments. East of the depot the ‘Defence Line-
Green’ was established. This was to form part of the
Bristol Area outer defences. It consisted of pillboxes,
trenches, tank traps, and earthworks to allow the line
to be manned by designated troops who were
stationed nearby. If the Germans had invaded, and
got as far as this line, they might have been taken
aback by ease with which its defenders could expend
ammunition. They would not have been surprised at
the existence of Copenacre, as at least one German

spy is known to have worked in the depot during the
early days of its construction.

Siding provision

With so much munitions, explosive and freight traffic
on the move in the quarry area the need for more
sidings was soon apparent. The construction of
sidings at Beanacre, on the Thingley to Bradford on
Avon line, at Lacock, (on the same line) and at
Monkton Farleigh (on the main line, east of Bath) was
put in hand. A proposed surface high explosive (HE)
store at Beanacre to hold approx. 10,000 tons of HE,
adjacent to the sidings, was never built.

The Royal Engineers were also developing the
quarry at Monkton Farleigh as a magazine, its
purchase having been sanctioned in March 1937. Its
38 acres of underground passage were intended to
hold an estimated 56,500 tons of ammunition.

It was at this time that the development of Chilmark
Quarry, lying west of Salisbury was authorised. It had
been purchased in June 1936, and was intended for
RAF use. It was in fact the only one of the ‘reserve’
munitions depots to survive WWII without a serious
problem or catastrophe.

To service the railway needs of this quarry a
connection was made off of the main line, just west of
Dinton station, at Ham Cross. The connection was
separate from that into the nearby Dinton RAF
munitions depot sidings (also known as the
Baverstock sidings). These were mainly for RAF use,
but the Navy also used a part. The standard gauge
tracks were laid in the normal materials and
construction for that time.

Going westward the branch curved away to the north
up a shallow valley, reaching the Ham Cross depot in
approx. Vi mile. At Ham Cross the standard gauge
track opened out into four sidings, entering a number
of transhipment sheds. At these sheds the ingoing or
outgoing explosives were moved between the
standard gauge wagons and the narrow gauge
wagons by forklift trucks.

The 24-inch gauge twin ‘main line’ narrow gauge
railway then went the approx. 2 miles between Ham
Cross Depot and the quarry entrance.

The NG tracks were built of 20 or 251b flat bottom
(FB) rail, spiked to sawn oak sleepers, on ash ballast.
The gauge wandered anywhere between 2ft and
60cm, which seems to have caused some problems
with maintenance (the track was relayed in 1983 with
351b FB rail, with Pandrol clip baseplates, on treated
softwood sleepers with a larger cross section, on
stone ballast).

21

Subterranea

Wiltshire Stone Quarry Railways in WWII

Near the quarry entrance the 2ft tracks passed the
twin engine sheds. These were built back-to-back on
a short slope. The shed nearest the quarry held the
three battery locomotives used within the quarry, with
their necessary electrical chargers, etc. The end
furthest from the quarry held the diesel locomotives
used to work the trains on the ‘main line’ between the
quarry and Hams Cross.

Chilmark Quarry opened as an RAF ammunition
store in January 1940. Its designated overflow depot,
when it could not move enough munitions to accept
any more, was Charlton Hawethorn Airfield, in
Somerset. From July 1945 Long Newnton Airfield, in
Gloucestershire was used, with Charlton Hawethorn
closing at the end of 1947.

Chilmark (and the nearby Dinton surface store) may
have been used to store a greater proportion of the
larger bombs for the RAF, and the build of the 150
wagons used reflected this. Manufactured by
Hudson, the wagons were unique to Chilmark, with
bogies used, and capable of carrying two 500 or
10001b bombs, in special clamps. To move these
bombs on and off the wagons a forklift truck was
always carried on the trains, in its own special

wagon. With the typical width of a Chilmark

passageway being about 14ft, using a forklift to

manoeuvre 10001b bombs about and stack them,

must have been interesting. Breaking up the stacks
to reload the bombs would also have had its
moments.

The manufacturer of the original electric locomotives
is not known, but three of the original Ruston
44/48HP diesels survived into the 1980s, one being
assigned to the nearby Dinton RAF depot sidings.

At other quarries the smaller bombs, shells, and
boxes of explosives were normally lifted by hand, and
possibly moved by means of sack trucks.

At Monkton Farleigh several new slope shafts,
constructed by WD contractors, augmented the
original quarry shafts. When the new slope shafts
were ready for use the winches needed to raise the
wagons to the surface had not been delivered, but
the Royal Engineers overcame the problem quickly.
They built a length of Decauville 2ft gauge track away
from the head of the shaft, in line with it. The length
of this track was greater than the length of the shaft.
A locomotive, with a long wire rope attached was now
used to pull the loaded wagons directly from the
passage below up to the surface.

However the plans for movement of munitions were
always centred on carriage by railway. The WD,
having decided that the original surface railway and
incline (disused since the 1930s) was too exposed for

safety, had a tunnel driven from within the quarry, on
the top of the escarpment, down to the GWR’s main
line nearly 250 feet below in the valley. This tunnel
started at the western end of the quarry, leading
directly off of the end of the northern main haulage
tunnel, and contained two lines of track.

At the approach to the main line the foot of the
tunnel broadened out into an underground ‘shunting
yard’, which was 30 feet underground. Wagons were
moved in the inclined length of tunnel by a form of
endless chain (known as a ‘creeper-retarder’) that
had steel dogs projecting vertically from it that
engaged with the axles of the wagons.

The anticipated weight of moving the maximum
possible number of loaded munitions wagons was so
great that the creeper-retarder was built in two length
in the main tunnel, which was about three quarters of
a mile long. Later in the war conveyor belts were
substituted, but these also had their own particular
problems with belt tension, bombs bouncing off, etc..

From the underground shunting yard wagons were
hauled up onto the 1000ft long concrete loading
platform, built between the re-aligned former Ashley
Sidings running parallel to the down side of the main
London to Bristol line. Into the platform surface were
let a series of narrow gauge tracks, complete with the
points and crossovers between the tracks necessary
for moving both empty and loaded wagons to and
from the standard gauge wagons being loaded or
unloaded. All wagons were moved by hand on this
platform. The only ‘lifting equipment’ visible in
photographs of the period are sack trucks.

In April 1938 permission was given to develop a
further 25 acres of Monkton Farleigh Quarry as an
emergency store, as the existing munitions depots
could not accommodate the increased delivery rate of
ammunition and bombs.

Another quarry being developed at the same time as
Monkton Farleigh was Ridge Quarry. The movement
of munitions from it was divided between use of the
old NG railway leading to Corsham station Down
sidings, and movements of excess tonnage by lorries
to either Lacock or Beanacre sidings. Within the
quarry 2ft gauge Decauville track was used in the
main hauling ways of the 12-acre magazine area, but
temporary track would be laid as required to move
munitions out of any area. As mentioned previously
this quarry had two underground inclines worked by
winch, due to a slip fault which passes across the
quarry.

Lacock sidings had been completed in February
1943, with access points only at the northern end.
This was to prove to be a long-term constraint on the

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Wiltshire Stone Quarry Railways in WWII

working of the sidings, cutting down the possibie
number of train movements in and out of the sidings,
and necessitating additional shunting moves form
longer trains.

Thingley sidings were completed in August 1943, and
besides an array of longer sidings with various run-
round loops, and engine necks, transhipment sheds
were also provided. These were intended to allow
lorries to load to munitions trains if the adit into tunnel
quarry was put out of use, or at times of peak traffic
into or out of Copenacre CAD, and to allow the
maximum flexibility in disposing of the contents of
any train received. It should be remembered that
Thingley sidings were new in 1943, and the existing
NG systems had been centred on Corsham Down
sidings.

The concentration of railway sidings in the area was
now considered to be an invitation to being bombed
by the Luftwaffe. After high-level consideration it was
decided that decoys would be provided, in the form of
both fire, and light decoys.

The continued working of Beanacre sidings was
considered so important to the war effort that it was
one of the few places in England allowed to show
lights after the air raid warning had been sounded.
The lights would only be extinguished when
Copenacre control room had been notified that the
enemy aircraft would actually pass within sight of the
sidings, and then special ‘blue’ lighting would be
turned on so that shunting, and loading could
continue. It is not know if this scheme extended to
other munitions sidings in the area.

A railway practice at most of the munitions sidings
was that, if sufficient warning of an air raid were
received, the loaded munitions wagons would be
spread out singly, to avoid sympathetic explosion of
other wagons if one should be hit.

A dispatcher situated at Thingley sidings, who had a
direct phone line to the WD in London, controlled the
munitions train movements from the various sidings
in the Corsham area. That office would also have
been responsible for the breaking up of incoming
trains, and movement of wagons to the appropriate
siding for unloading.

During the period of 1939 to 1944 ammunition and
explosive traffic from the various quarries continued
to grow. In June 1944 over 1100 standard gauge
wagons were dispatched from the concentration
sidings at Thingley. In the last week of June alone
some 10,500 tons were dealt with. The combined
movements from Tunnel Quarry and Monkton
Farleigh in the April/May period were 32,000 tons,
and the much smaller Eastlays Quarry dispatched

15,000 tons by means of the narrow gauge track to
Corsham, and lorry movements to Lacock sidings.

It is not known how much explosive was stored
under Wiltshire, but when a much smaller magazine
in Wales detonated it left a hole over half a mile in
diameter. If a similar accident had occurred in Tunnel
Quarry it is likely that the adjacent large village of
Corsham would no longer exist.

Rundown

The end of the Second World War meant a gradual
decline in the munitions traffic. One by one, the
various quarries were emptied, and some of them
were returned to various civilian uses. This was
paralleled by the decline in railway traffic. Beanacre
sidings were out of use by March 1948, the other
sidings closing within seven years, with two
exceptions.

The last traffic emerged from Tunnel Quarry adit on
4'^ December 1962, it having been announced in the
September that Thingley sidings would no longer be
required. By 1966 most of the sidings had been
lifted, although a few remained, along with the
connection to the adjacent Up Main Line. That
connection was removed in August 1969.

The MoD was not abandoning underground storage
and use of quarries altogether. However, when the
Copenacre-Tunnel Quarry-Spring Quarry complex
was developed into the Government War
Headquarters (codename Burlington) during the
1950-1960s period, there was no need for the rail link
to be retained.

Passenger traffic

Freight has been extensively covered, but passenger
traffic was also a feature of the railways’ war effort in
connection with the Wiltshire quarries. The
underground magazines, and factories required a
large number of people to work in them. Some
18,000 men were employed, mainly underground, on
a two-shift system. Of this number some 7,000 were
moved to and from Bristol, (approximately 15 miles
away) each day. Railway passenger planning
culminated in several options being considered.

One was to extend Corsham station platforms to
cope with two trains at a time. Both the WD and the
GWR rejected this, as the resultant congestion would
have seriously delayed both main line trains, and
munitions trains.

Another was a new 3V2-mile double tracked branch,
off of the Melksham line, near the 4-mile post,
terminating at a new station, with extensive sidings
for carriages, at Westwells. This would have been
convenient for a number of the quarries used by the

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Wiltshire Stone Quarry Railways in WWII

military. The branch line would have required cuttings
up to 30ft deep, and embankments up to 15ft high,
with two overbridges and no fewer than six level
crossings.

The Treasury opposed all the schemes, and the
Ministry of War Transport abandoned its railway
transport aspirations for the quarry workers in March
1942.

The railway was still used to return munitions during
the 1940s, 1950s and into the 1960s, but exclusively
to Monkton Farleigh Quarry. It was now one-way
traffic, destined for destruction. Local inhabitants
grew used to hearing small explosions from the
woods, and seeing clouds of smoke rising up.

Eventually even the Government woke up to the fact
that the huge underground magazine was expensive
and its stock of munitions now small enough to be
held in surface establishments.

With the closure of Tunnel Quarry in 1963 the
railways’ long association with the Wiltshire stone
quarries came to an end. Two of the Hunslet
locomotives were dispatched to the Royal Engineers’
railway workshops at Bicester, where they were
rebuilt. The connection into Tunnel Quarry was
retained for five years after the quarry ceased to be a
magazine, but in November 1967 the Private Siding
agreement with British Railways was terminated.
The siding was lifted in 1973.

If you take the train from Chippenham to Bath, and sit
on the right hand side, facing forward, then just
before you enter Box Tunnel you will see the steel
doors leading into the Tunnel Quarry adit on the right.
The doors are now rusted, and welded shut. It is a
poor indication of a long history.

Rumour Control: No, Tunnel Quarry does not hold a
‘strategic government reserve of steam engines’ for
use when oil products run out. Don’t believe all you’re
told on the Internet. And no, there is no secret railway
entry into Tunnel Quarry from the lines within Box
Tunnel.

Track construction

Construction of the quarries’ own NG tracks was
typically sleepers formed of small-diameter untreated
tree trunks cut to length, with the bark still on usually.
The flat bottom rail of varying heights was always
spiked directly to the sleepers using a slightly curved
spike, square in section, with a chisel end and
rectangular head. Rail heights of 65mm to 110mm
have been recorded, but the foot width seems to
have always been approximately 85mm.lt is believed
that the stone quarry railways had a common gauge
of two foot five and a half inches. With side wear, or a
little gauge spreading this figure is sometimes quoted

as two foot six inches.

Curves if slight were laid by barring the straight track
to the curve required prior to ‘ballasting’, tighter
radius curves were accommodated by using a ‘jim
crow’ to pre-bend the rails. The original ‘ballast’ was
any small stone waste lying adjacent to the track
being laid, but it is known that some small single¬
sized carboniferous limestone chippings were used to
pack the underground tracks in later years. Where
railway was laid in hard-floored underground
passageways it was usually sunk in, so that the head
of the rail was flush with the surface.

The Military NG railways were of 2ft gauge both
surface and underground. The majority of this was of
the Decauville type, FB rails bolted to pressed steel
sleepers. Some surface lengths were constructed of
20/25lb FB rail, spiked to 6in by 5in oak sleepers.
This gauge had been adopted by the British Army in
WWI, and still continues where the military wish to
construct a railway, unless the loads and distances
involved would justify the use of standard gauge. The
Royal Engineers continue to operate both NG and
standard gauge railways.

BG

Abbreviations

Broad Gauge

CAD

Central Ammunition Depot

HE

High Explosive

GWR

Great Western Railway

lb

pound (weight)

mm

millimetre

NG

Narrow Gauge

RN

Royal Navy

SG

Standard Gauge

TNT

Tri-Nitro-Toluene (an explosive)

WD

War Department

WQ

War Qffice

1919

Chronology

Government committee on arms supply

1920

depots discusses the need for more
underground depots.

More discussion of above item.

1921

Notwithstanding the above. Ridge

1928

Quarry is shut as a munitions depot.

WQ requires a definitive list of

July 1928

underground chambers in the British
Isles.

Scheme initiated to construct the Central

June 1929

Ammunition Depot (CAD) at Copenacre.
“Definitive list’’ of underground chambers

May 1930

in the British Isles delivered to the WO
Ridge Quarry chosen for further

14/11/34

investigation.

Ridge Quarry inspected by the Royal

Engineers.

24

Subterranea

Wiltshire Stone Quarry Railways in WWII

15/11/34

War Office informed of the 45-
acre Tunnel Quarry.

June 1942

The Railway Executive Committee
reports that increased train¬

29/7/35

War Office, GWR and the Bath
Stone Company meet at Corsham
to discuss extending Tunnel
Quarry and Corsham Station
sidings.

running capacity can be achieved
by means of doubling,
quadrupling, additional passing
loops and new junctions (Report
on railway measures to increase

15/8/35

War Office obtains Treasury
approval to buy Ridge and Tunnel

capacity for running munitions and
military trains).

Quarries.

Oct. 1942

Construction and railway work in

22/11/35

War Office fully committed to
storage of ammunition and
explosives in the quarries.

Tunnel Quarry complete, storage
for 100,000 tons of explosives
available.

10/12/35

War Office and the Bath Stone

15/2/1943

Lacock sidings completed.

Company meet to discuss raising
the roof of Tunnel Quarry rail
siding adit.

Aug.1943

Thingley chord line reinstated.

Peak of storage in Ridge Quarry,
31,500 tons stored

Early 1936

RAF bomb and ammunition

2/9/1945

Farleigh Down sidings closed.

manufacture accelerated.

28/12/1946

Farleigh Down signal box closed.

June 1936

Estimate for construction of
Thingley sidings is £45,000.

15/3/1948

Beanacre sidings taken out of
use.

June 1936

Chilmark Quarry purchased by the
WO.

9/10/1950

Farleigh Down sidings ‘officially’
closed.

June 1936

WO lets contract for construction
works, including railways, in

Feb.1955

Thingley chord line taken out of
use.

Tunnel Quarry, Thingley sidings.

1955

RAF vacates Ridge Quarry.

and Ridge Quarry.

1958

Chilmark Quarry status changed

July 1936

War Office construction works in
Tunnel and Ridge Quarries

to “Reserve Replenishment

Depot”

commences.

Aug. 1959

Thingley Chord connections

Nov. 1936

Works required to stop extensive
roof slip in Tunnel Quarry.

removed and rails lifted for the
second time.

1/11/1937

Farleigh Down engineers’ siding
and signal box come into use.

Aug. 1959

Connection to Thingley sidings
lifted.

1937

The Government opens talks with
the railway companies about

6/9/1962

Thingley sidings closure
announced.

arrangements in case of war.

1963

Tunnel Quarry closed as a

6/9/1938

WO agrees to purchase land for
Beanacre sidings.

munitions depot, other uses
continue.

8/1/1939

Beanacre sidings signal box
opened.

1964

Army vacates Ridge Quarry.
Monkton Farleigh closed.

16/3/1939

WO enters into private siding
agreement with the GWR

Sept. 1964

Lacock sidings taken out of use.
Track at Thingley sidings

17/4/1939

Farleigh Down sidings come into
use.

Nov. 1967

simplified, one connection
retained.

Private siding agreement with

9/9/1939

WO lets contract for construction

British Railways terminated.

of pillboxes and “railway blocks” in
the Corsham area (part of the
‘Stop Line-Green’ element of the

1973

Tunnel Quarry siding lifted.

Ridge Quarry and surface ground
sold by MoD

Bristol area outer defences).

Early 1990s

Decision to close Chilmark

Oct. 1939

Modification of the underground

Quarry.

loading platform in Tunnel Quarry
completed, standard gauge

2000

Chilmark emptied of munitions,
tracks lifted.

underground railway layout
completed.

2001

Chilmark Quarry

decontaminated/closed. Land

Oct. 1939

Jan. 1940

Approx. 10,000 tons of RN
ammunition now stored in railway
trucks owing to lack of depots.
Chilmark Quarry opened

retained by MoD

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Wiltshire Stone Quarry Railways in WWII

Bibliography and Sources

Box Stone Mines, 2"'* and 3^“' editions, pub.
Gotham Caving Group.

Personal correspondence with:

• Major J.A. (Tubby) Robins, Senior Instructor
(Railways) British Army (Ret'd)

• W. McCanna, Chief Mechanical Engineer,
Army Railway Organization, (Ret'd)

Public Record Office, Kew, London, ‘Rail’ files.

Secret Underground Cities, by Nick McCamley

Wiltshire Library Services, Trowbridge branch.
Historic Ordnance Survey maps.

OTHER ITEMS

You probably know most of these, but as I found
them I state them here...

No ‘fireless' locomotives are known to have been
used in any of the WO underground munitions stores,
although these would have removed a source of risk.

In 1941 the GWR stated that it had some 93
Government establishments connected to its system,
and it had cost £1,386,000 to connect them.

Surface HE stores existed at: Llanberis slate quarries
(emptied by 1955), Rhiwias slate quarry, Pontrilas,
Coventry, Dinton, Longparish, Eaglescliff, Savernake
Forest.

In August 1939 a disused quarry at Llanberis was
purchased, and both standard and NG railways were
installed in this. Internal lifts were used to raise
bombs into the upper stories of the underground
galleries. In Jan 1942 some two thirds of this depot
collapsed during a train being unloaded.

Rail-connected HE filling factories existed at
Bridgend, Glascoed, Hereford,

Railway tunnels used for temporary storage of HE
filled railway wagons: Colwall (Herefordshire),
Hawthorne and Newlands (Forest of Dean),
Rowethorne (Nottinghamshire).

Charlton Hawethorne airfield, and Long Newnton
Airfield were used as overflow depots for Chilmark
Quarry Munitions depot, when required. Colerne
airfield was used as overflow for Copenacre CAD
when required.

Sorrow Quarry, near Buxton, was rail-connected. The
standard gauge lines went underground into 7
parallel arched roofed tunnels. Part of this depot was
double storied, but I don’t know if the railway also
went into the second storey.

Zossen Wunsdorf - Germany

It was an opportunity too good to
miss. I had previously arranged to
visit Berlin for another matter, and
contacted our man in Germany,
Soviet and NVA Bunker Supremo
Mike Barton to see whether he was
going to be anywhere near Berlin
while I was there. Guess what - he
was actually spending a day in the
museum at Wunsdorf on the
outskirts of Berlin researching and
trawling through Soviet
documentation relating to the
former times.

Many of you who read the trip
reports and write-up on Mike's first
GDR Bunker-Tour will remember
that Wunsdorf was the
headquarters (HQ) of the Soviet
forces in East Germany until their
total withdrawal 1991 - 1994. The

The Participants Outside the former Soviet
sports centre - with Fred Lenin - Photo by
Mike Barton

force was generally known over the
years as the Group of Soviet
Forces in Germany (GSFG), but at
the time of reunification it was
renamed Western Group of Forces
(WGF).

Sensing an opportunity to arrange
a visit into the huge ex-Wehrmacht,
ex-Soviet bunker at Wunsdorf,
Mike readily agreed to meet me
and jig-up a private extended visit
to the bunker. The arranged group
visit on the First Bunker Tour never
took place due to an admin foul up,
so this was too good to miss.

Purely by chance I discovered that
the budget airline Ryanair had
extended the deadline for their
'Great Seat Give-Away' for
another few days. I had a car

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Subterranea

Zossen Wunsdorf - Germany

arranged for my trip, and at the last minute (and it
really was the last minute) contacted the two people I
knew were most likely to be able to drop everything
at once and flee to Berlin. So, at 0445 Thursday
morning, myself (Tony Page), Robin Ware, and Dan
McKenzie found ourselves at Stanstead Airport
poised to fly to Berlin.

We arrived at Berlin at 0845, and after completing my
business reason for going, drove to Bucherstadt
(Book City) in Wunsdorf, some 40 km south of Berlin
where we met Mike. As you know, Wunsdorf was HQ
to the Soviet forces in the former GDR up until they
pulled out in 1994. (The force was generally known
over the years as the Group of Soviet Forces in
Germany - GSFG - but at
the time of reunification it
was renamed Western
Group of Forces - WGF).

Several of the large
buildings previously
occupied by units of
WGF's 16 Air Army have
now been converted into
very desirable
accommodation or, in the
case of the Bucherstadt,
into one of several
buildings forming a
complex of second-hand
bookshops. The main
bookshop also houses an
excellent museum upstairs
with exhibits collected from
the Wunsdorf garrisons.

The large room contains a
wealth of history: from the
Wehrmacht to the Red Army, uniforms, weapons,
army posters, photographs, absolutely tons of stuff. A
real time capsule which completely absorbed our
interest for over an hour. Not to be missed, so make
a note to visit, (www.buecherstadt.de)

Just around the corner is a second museum where
the emphasis is more on the military history of
Wunsdorf as a whole since the area was in the hands
of the military way back in the time of the Kaiser and
was later taken over by the Wehrmacht as its main
HQ.

Guided tours are made daily of the huge Soviet
bunker that served the WGF HQ under the callsign
RANET. Mike arranged a private 'extended' tour of
this massive bunker, and our thanks go to Herr
Borchert, the guide, who very kindly took us to the
bunker along the non-tourist route so that we also
passed the former staff 'cottages' of the Wehrmacht,
called MAYBACH. This was formerly a series of large
hardened and bunkered buildings for the various staff
officers of the Wehrmacht arranged around a ring

road and linked by tunnels. (Qn the First Bunker
Tour, entry to the bunker having been thwarted, a
small group of us opted to 'miss lunch' and effect
entry into this tunnel system. It was obvious that we
were in a tunnel system which linked all of the
bunkered 'houses' on the ring, and for an hour we ran
as far as we could. There were various side-tunnels,
and other long tunnels presumably acting as
emergency exits etc. We knew then that we simply
had to return...) In addition, these surface buildings
were disguised as private houses, so the whole effect
was one of a small housing estate. From the air, to
'visiting' RAF flights, it certainly would have looked
just like a housing estate. From the surface however,
the thickness and construction of the roofs would

have immediately given the game away. The ruse
worked though; it was never bombed. After WW2 the
complex was partly demolished by the Russians, but
only partly since the ferro-concrete buildings proved
to be too well built and refused to collapse
completely. They were blown up from the inside, and
remain today in a severely damaged state.
Incidentally, the shock waves from the explosions
were sufficient to push a water tower some 100
metres away seven degrees out of the vertical.

Once Herr Borchert had shown us the surface
buildings at the entrance of the originally Wehrmacht
bunker, including the later stylistic modifications by
the Russians, we went in. Entering through the
decontamination area at the main entrance, we found
ourselves in a three-storey complex. Basically, the
Wehrmacht had had teleprinter facilities on the first
level, radio facilities on the second level and the
services on the third level. In addition, there were
naturally further rooms for duty personnel. In those
days, the complex was codenamed ZEPPELIN and

Overview Map of the sites visited -1/2. Zossen Wunsdorf, 3. Radrel (radio-relay) site, 4. NUP
unmanned repeater station 5. Beeskow Rear Services of the EGER airforce and Dino Farm

27

Subterranea

Zossen Wunsdorf - Germany

was officially Amt 500 (telephone exchange 500 - one
of many scattered across the German Reich for
military purposes). The construction of ZEPPELIN
comms bunker was started in March 1937, and it was
operational June 1939. It cost 25-35 million
Reichsmarks (initial cost) and had a total floor space
4861.35 sq metres. The outer wall thickness is 1.60
metres, the bunker roof 3.00 metres, floor 2.00
metres, earth fill 5.00-7.00 metres.

(Further reading: The Underground Military
Command Bunkers of Zossen, Germany. Hans
George Kampe. Schiffer Military/Aviation History.
ISBN 0-7643-0164-0 )

The Russians altered the complex to suit their own
purposes and established communications facilities
on the top level and had the huge command post for

the WGF commander-in-chief (CinC) on level 2.
Since MAYBACH no longer existed, the Russians
having blown it up, the need arose to accommodate
WGF staff officers inside the rambling complex.

After we had been given a general introduction to the
complex, Herr Borchert then left us alone inside to go
wherever we wanted, having arranged that we would
leave through the back door some time later! This
suited us fine, as there was no pressure to adhere to
any kind of guided tour with the requisite time
constraints. Basically, we were off like Rats down
Drainpipes. We had come suitably equipped with
lighting, cameras and hard hats (just in case, you
understand) and thoroughly explored the entire
bunker on our own. Most of the bunker was in fact lit,
to handle the public tours, but the lower level had
large areas of darkness; many unlit rooms and
enticing tunnels - some with surface water. There

was some water ingress, but the deepest it got was
only about six inches. The custodians are pumping it
out, and seem to be winning.

Within the bunker, which is basically stripped out
save odd remnants of the former regime, we found
piles of rubbish, old Soviet newspapers, beds, and
the 'usual' stuff not worth clearing out when the
owners can no longer afford the rent. For instance,
one corridor served as the conscripted mens'
sleeping accommodation; 600 men, hot-bed system.
There were hinge-down metal bunks all along the
walls. To service the 600, there were three (yes,
three) toilets. No comment required. Another corridor,
blanked off, had served as a small-bore weapons
range. All the generators had been removed, as had -
apparently - everything with a re-sale value. In one of
. the rooms we saw 16 machine

/ .beds on the floor, apparently these

were for the motor generators
used to recharge the accumulators
which provided the backup power
for the comms equipment. The
filters and associated equipment
were still largely in place.

Around the public-tour area, there
were various photo displays
depicting 1940s to 1990s bunker
photos. As we explored, taking
hundreds of photos, we
sometimes heard the voices of a
public tour in the distance. Very
atmospheric. We managed to
remain hidden, and finally
emerged a couple of hours later to
be met by another guide with her
group of tourist visitors who
seemed 'surprised' at our lights
and hard hat attire. We pretended
not to notice, and made our way
back to the bookshop.

After tea and buns at the little restaurant, we stashed
our gear at the hotel previously arranged and then
returned to wait for Herr Borchert to finish a later
private tour. We also had time to visit the garrison
museum upstairs, which really is something everyone
with an interest in the former times should visit.

Having been underground for a substantial part of the
afternoon, we set off at 18.30 on a sunny evening to
tour some of the HQ buildings which extend over
several kilometers along the main road. Fortunately,
we had the keys to all of the security gates and a lot
of the buildings. Our first point of call was to look in at
Burlakov's (Soviet Commander) residence. Without
exception, we all fell in love with the villa of the last
WGF CinC and decided to buy it. This house was
absolutely lovely, despite it gracefully slipping into
decay. Replete with long gravel drive, with knee-level
lighting, surrounded by what must have been

Entrance to the Zeppelin Bunker - Photo by Dan McKenzie

28

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Zossen Wunsdorf - Germany

beautiful gardens with huge rhododendron bushes,
this house was lovely in its day. Built by the Germans
before WW2, it was taken over by the Russians. The
whole 'estate' of magnificent houses is totally
abandoned, the only guy there a security guard who
drives around in his van keeping an eye on his silent
charges. As we stood and gawped, all had their own
thoughts but, I suspect, along the lines of what
stories these buildings had to tell. Thing is though,
no-one these days seems to want to listen. It would
be a real tragedy if these houses crumbled away, as
they were a snap-shot of German History...

Our next port of call was to the former sports centre
of the Wehrmacht, which had been used at the time
of the 1936 Olympics. All of the buildings create a
magnificent impression when seen from a distance

there is a large photographic reproduction just
outside the garrison museum which we had visited
earlier.

In one part of the building was a Swimming pool.
Huge. Palatial. Again, one wonders how the
Russians coped with leaving all this behind and being
billeted in a tent with, in many cases, their families
'somewhere in Russia' . We're not talking about
conscripts here, but career High Ranking staff
Officers.

The long day was gradually coming to an end. We
had arisen at 0330 that morning and were
consequently starting to flag a little. Well, okay, more
than 'a little'. (Mike says - confirmation yet again that
the youth of today has no staying power! I was
chuffed that he perceived us 'youth'). We said

(don't we all?), but when viewed close up,
Soviet care, time and weather have all taken
their toll. Nevertheless, there is still a feeling
of grandeur and magnificence as you drive
through this once Soviet domain, from where
the CinC ruled over his kingdom.

Nearby was a former WGF tank workshop
with extensive garage facilities for the
numerous motor bikes that I would have to
find a home for, once we had bought the villa.
Dream on... (mind you, Herr Borchert did ask
me for my card - so I gave him my VISA card
and urged "Keep it. I'll move in tomorrow" .
Unfortunately, he appeared to think I was
joking...)

Next, we went on to the former central leisure
and recreation centre for Soviet officers. In
front of this absolutely magnificent building
was a huge stature of Lenin. Photo
opportunity time. Again, a magnificent
stepped entrance, a sweeping staircase,
columns, spacious rooms, extensive windows.

It must have been very difficult to have left all
this behind at the time of the Soviet withdrawal

Inside the Soviet Museum at Zossen Wunsdorf - Photo by Robin Ware

and to move into a tent somewhere in Russia. But,
that's life; some times you win ...

The building had also contained various room set
aside as exhibition and memorial centres dedicated
to the overthrow of fascism, the concentration camps,
and subsequently the fighting qualities of the Soviet
forces stationed in East Germany.

Behind the main building stands a circular
construction which is linked with the former via an
overhead passageway. This once housed the
magnificent diorama depicting the storming of the
Reichstag (parliament) in Berlin by Russian forces at
the end of WW2. The original was removed by the
Russians when they left in the 1990s, not for any
historical or patriotic reasons, but simply because
they were unable to find a local buyer who was
prepared to put up the asking price of DM 10,000.
(under three thousand quid. Madness.) Fortunately,

farewell to Herr Borchert who had sacrificed a great
deal of his own time, but who, in so doing, had given
us a great deal of pleasure.

We went to our hotel again for refreshments and
early to bed.

Wednesday saw an early start, with Mike Barton
giving us final instructions for the next part of our trip
as he was off to spend the day (and night) in the
second museum in Wunsdorf where he is working on
the documents left behind by the Russians in their
haste to get home before the borders closed.

First site: Radrel (radio-relay) site. Part of the huge
communications support for the Wunsdorf HQ.
Normal radrel facilities down below by the radio mast,
while further up the hill is a bunker with the anchor
points on the two hard-standings on its south side for
the two pairs of tropospheric dishes, each some 10 m
in diameter, (now long gone) which formed links to

29

Subterranea

Zossen Wunsdorf - Germany

Next it was off south of Beeskow and just
north of Ranzig. This former military area
had two purposes; a) Barracks for
Maintenance Unit 14 which was
responsible for the central command
post. The maintenance units had little to
do with maintenance, more with bunkers.
And: b) Command post for the Rear
Services of the EGER airforce and air
defence formations and included the
alternative Command post for the central
CP-14 and also included the associated
auxiliary comms centre HNZ-23

We knew that, allegedly, on previous
visits, others had counted up to 120
Soviet Home Made Radio Tower at the Radrel Troposcatter site - Photo by various bunkers here of many different

Robin Ware

enterprising local lady whom we saw tending her crop
and travelling home by ancient bicycle. Good for her.

The site's old radio mast was still standing (just) and -
in the search for good photographs you understand -

sizes and combinations. The area is
generally referred to as the 'Dino Farm' as countless
bunkers have large tubes rising vertically out of them,
and look like Dinosaur necks. These odd-looking
tubes have a bend in them at the end to which filters
were fitted, although most of the filters have since

the south and the east. The bunker housed the actual
comms equipment and service facilities for the site.
Dan and Robin effected entry to the empty bunker,
which was single level. We explored the (closed) site
and inspected various surface buildings and features.
We found the fuel line, and discovered a fair amount
of paperwork and instruction books in the
abandoned, derelict buildings. We were surprised to
discover Western magazine adverts plastered around
the conscripts' kitchens and wash rooms, depicting
cars, girls, and cigarettes. "Let's Go West" brand
being favourite...

There was a large complex of buildings, and we
spent about an hour or two exploring. There was a
large greenhouse and vegetable patch, a part of
which was being surreptitiously farmed by an

two of us [un-named] climbed right up it. Upon close
inspection, the quality of the welding was, ahem,
poor, so we (suddenly very carefully now) made our
way down. The mast resembled something tacked-
together from lots of old B&Q car wheel ramps
welded together...

We then drove on to an old abandoned NUP, the
Russian abbreviation for an unmanned repeater
station on a cable link. These were sited every 15 -
18 km along the cable routes, of which there were
many in East Germany. In my 'travels' in the former
GDR, I always noted these mounds by the side of the
road. Once attuned, one saw them all over the place.
The standard construction was in the form of two
cylinders, one placed vertically, used as the entrance
and standing on the second which lay horizontally
below ground. The entrance area normally houses
some cable monitoring equipment and
has a manhole and cover in the floor. A
ladder leads down some ten feet into to
the main equipment area. In this case,
the cubicles and other items are still
there. Normally, a NUP has a small hut
built around it from metal sheeting with
the door having a signalling device fitted
to warn the local signals unit, should
anyone try to enter the hut illegally. In
this case, the NUP is actually semi-
submerged and forms a small mound
immediately by the roadside. Practically
all NUPs were removed either by the
Russians themselves or else by the
German authorities later, although there
are still odd sites to be found along the
old cable routes.

30

Subterranea

Zossen Wunsdorf - Germany

After finishing up at the Dino site, we
drove back to Schonefeld Airport and
we arrived back at Stanstead at around
2300, wondering whether it had all
really happened. It had.

been removed. The result certainly looks like the long
neck and head of a dinosaur. We carefully entered
the area, and spent a good two hours walking

containing evidence of their former life. One was
obviously the cook-house training bunker, as it had
cookers, urns, and the GDR's quota of thermos
flasks, unissued empty tin foil packets,
and plastic food trays still stashed in it.
We also stumbled upon what looked
like a command HQ training bunker,
with extra tunnels, a control room,
upper level, perspex situation board
screen, filters, etc. Within the bunkers
can still be found paperwork and
manuals/handbooks (in German, not
Russian). At the far end of the site, we
found paintbatls which indicated that
some areas may be rented out on an
occasional basis for paint balling.

. • -TiTT

\ ‘V/, -

vV-Alf;

My thanks go to Mike Barton who - at
no notice whatsoever - jigged up the
day at Wunsdorf and our hotel for us.
Mike contributed much to this written
report.

One of the “Dino” bunkers at the site of the Command post for the Rear
Services of the EGER airforce and Maintenance Unit 14 - photo by Robin Ware Tony Page

through it and going into as many
bunkers (40+) as we came across.
We saw vehicle hides, and sub-
level open vehicle bunkers with
provision for start-up or power units
in rooms behind them. The
extensive perimeter of the vast site
is triple fenced - an outer high
barbed wire fence, then serious
high-voltage electric fence, with an
inner high barbed wire fence. It is
all wrecked. Currently, the heavily-
wooded site is being logged, and
there were deep ruts in places
where the trees had been dragged
out by heavy equipment. The
bunkers are literally everywhere.
Scores and scores of them. There
were a number of surface buildings
too, but the main event were the
Dino bunkers. We entered over
twenty, careful not to tread on the
countless frogs now in residence.
Most Dino bunkers had beds for
eight. They were gas tight. Most
were identical. We also found
various larger bunkers, still

One of the “Vehicle hides” at the site of the Command post for the Rear Services of
the EGER air force and Maintenance Unit 14 - photo by Robin Ware

31

Subterranea

East Cambridgeshire Council Emergency Centre

Emergency Exit

The East Cambridgeshire District Council Emergency
Centre which is located in the basement of the
council offices at The Grange in Nutholt Lane, Ely
(TL543806). The Grange is a former Maternity
Hospital that was refurbished as the new council
offices after closure. The council's emergency centre
was located in the basement, probably opening in
1982. The emergency centre was enlarged when a
new extension to the Grange was built in the 1980's
with a new protected control room being incorporated
into the basement of the new extension.

Entrance into the bunker is down a flight of stone
stairs from the old hospital building where a single
gas tight door opens into a small lobby. All the rooms
to the left of the lobby have now been put to other
uses while those to the right have been retained as
the current Emergency Centre. Straight ahead from
the entrance door is a large store room and to the left
is the kitchen/canteen. There is no door into this
room but there's a black curtain hanging in the
doorway, in recent years this room has been used as
a photographic darkroom. The kitchen still retains its
wooden cupboards and food preparation table and
two sinks. Two rooms were accessed from the
kitchen, one was the unisex toilet and the other a
dormitory; both have been stripped of any original
fittings and are now used for storage.

Back in the entrance lobby to the right there is a

second gas tight door into room that has been
partitioned into a small rectangular room and an 'L'
shaped room around it. The ' L' shaped room
contains a small BBC studio. It is very unusual to find
a radio studio in local authority emergency centre but
according to the log, the studio was first used in 1982
so was obviously an original installation; it is still used
today for local radio interviews. All the original
equipment remains in place including a Glensound
GSL 4 mixer, STC headphone, a Bayer M201
microphone and a small rack incorporating a
CDQ1000 Musicam ISDN unit and a radio
transmitter. There are three large acoustic tiles on the
wall. This equipment is completely different to the
studio equipment found in most RGHQ's which is of a
standard design and owned by the BBC. It seems
likely that at this site the council bought their own
apparatus. It is necessary to walk through the studio
to enter all the other rooms in the bunker but when
the studio was installed the extension didn't exist.
The smaller rectangular room was the 'Controllers
Office'. In one wall there is a small gas tight door in
the wall; this was the original emergency exit.

On the far side of the BBC studio there is a steel and
concrete blast door leading into the 1980's extension.
The first room entered is described as a 'Water
Storage and Sanitation Room' with a single Elsan
chemical toilet, small hand basin with a hand pump
and a large water tank. There is also some electrical

32

Subterranea

East Cambridgeshire Council Emergency Centre

switchgear and the main fuse box for
the bunker on the wall. At the far side of
this room is a second blast door into an
airlock with another blast door to the left,
a fourth straight ahead and a wooden
door to the right. Immediately behind the
wooden door is another blast door and
behind it steps up to the car park. This is
a second entrance into the bunker,
allowing the extension to be used as a
self contained unit.

Back in the air lock, straight ahead is
the generator room with a Lister
generator, fuel tank and filters. There is
a pressure valve between this room and
the air lock. The final blast door in the
air lock leads into the
'Control Room' the largest room in the
bunker. There is a large table in the
centre of the room with local maps fixed
under a Perspex top and chairs
arranged around the table. Other maps
around the walls include two maps of
the UK, as map of England and two
large scale ordnance survey maps of the East
Cambridgeshire District. There is also an incidents
board on one wall and below it a long table with
chairs along the length of the wall and a map cabinet
in one corner of the room. In an alcove at the back of
the room is the SX50 ECN unit with it's associated
control boxes mounted on the wall.

Radio Equipment - Photo by Nick Catford

Alongside the ECN a door leads into the 'C.M.X.
Room' There is a second map cabinet in this room
along with the Luwa Ventilation plant supplied by
Tom Butler in Northampton, this pumps filtered air
through trunking around the bunker. There is a small
blast door on one wall but no ladder or step irons
behind it making emergency escape very difficult,

especially as the locked
grille above is very small.
Large people would have
great difficulty getting out
here.

The final room in the
bunker is accessed from
the CMX room, this is
the 'Radio Room' which
has a Bosch intercom
and radio transceiver.
There is also a message
window between this
room and the control
room. The Emergency
Centre still retains a
number of PDRM82
radiation meters and a
PDRM82F with an
external probe as found
in ROC posts.

Nick Catford

Control Room - Photo by Nick Catford

33

Having been based in Thionville in 2000 and 2001,
we returned to the town for this year’s excursion. Our
mission was to get into the Maginot Line forts that we
had been unable to access in previous years and to
visit some of the older German fortifications. In order
to achieve that ambition we recruited celebrated
author and founder member of the Fortress Study
Group, Anthony Kemp who now lives in France and
has numerous useful contacts. Tony was able to pull
a few strings and arrange access to
ROCHONVILLIERS, a Gros Overages that is still in
the hands of the French military. He also planned
visits to various 19th and early 20th Century German
forts around Metz and Thionville that provided
inspiration for the Maginot Line engineers in the
1930’s and in the 2nd World War, to offer a spirited
defence to the advancing American troops.

We arrived in France on Saturday 10th May with
most of the day spent on the long drive from Calais to
Thionville. We arrived in the area late in the afternoon
and before driving to our hotel in the town centre we
took a brief look at the Petit Ouvrage at
IMMERHOFF. This is one of many restored forts on
the Maginot line that are open to the public. Some of
them are only open on certain days and in the case
of IMMERHOFF it’s the 2nd wekend of each month

through the summer. It isn’t one of the major museum
forts and is a very low-key affair with one or two
people there to show visitors around. When we
arrived there were no other cars in the car park and
oniy one man on duty in the portacabin. As we had
been inside the fort before on a privately arranged
tour in 2000 we limited our visit to a surface walk
around the four blocks with three mortar turrets and
various observation cupolas.

From IMMERHOFF we drove to ZEITERHOLTZ
three miles to the west nearEntrange. This is another
museum that’s open to the public on the 1st weekend
of the month through the summer. ZEITERHOLTZ is
an interval shelter or ‘Abri’. A two level infantry
blockhouse that housed a command centre and
dormitories for the troops that manned the small
casemates and strongpoints that filled in the gaps
and blind spots between the larger fortifications along
the Maginot Line. The single block is located in
woodland and its only defence is one observation
cupola on top and two machine gun positions at the
front. From ZIETERHOLTZ we drove 8 miles into of
Thionville where we met up with Tony Kemp our
guide for the rest of the week and Clayton Donnell an
American expert on the line who had joined us in the
Alps in 2002. He couldn’t resist the temptation to

34

Subterranea

A little French excursion

come back for another helping of intensive visits; we
like to make an early start each day with lunch on the
hoof, often not returning to the hotel till 8pm.

For our first day proper, we visited one major site,
FORT DRIANT, in the hills overlooking Metz. The fort
was built by the German Empire at the turn of the
century. After the Franco Prussian War of 1870 -
1871 Germany annexed Alsace and part of Lorraine.
They introduced the German language into the region
and expelled many of the French. German engineers
looked at the existing French fortifications in a ring
around Metz which were traditional polygonal forts.
Some were improved and some new forts of a similar
design were built but the Germans had developed
new ideas in fort design known as the ‘Feste’. This
involved fortifying an area of high ground with all the
buildings blending in to the surroundings and offering
few masonry targets. Guns were located under
turrets (cupolas) and the infantry and artillery blocks
were separated and linked together by tunnels.

DRIANT was to form part of an outer ring of new
Feste type forts around Metz and was armed with
10cm canons and 15cm howitzers in banks for three
beneath rotating turrets. For the first time, the fort
was also equipped with forced air ventilation, central
heating and electricity; French engineers later copied
these new concepts during the building of the
Maginot Line. During the first world war, the fort only
fired in anger once when one of the 10cm canons
was fired at the advancing American forces.

In 1918 the fort was handed back to the French and
quickly fell into disuse. The Germans captured it in
1940 and much of the artillery was stripped out for
the Atlantic Wall and the fort was used as an
underground factory. However, in August 1944,
General Patton’s forces swept into Paris and through
France towards the Rhine. When the army reached
the River Meuse at Verdun they ran out of petrol and
there was a five day delay while new supplies were
brought to the troops. The German's used this delay
to scrape together three regiments in Metz, from the
local officer training school, some of whom were
seasoned veterans of the Russian front and some of
the turret guns at DRIANT were re-commissioned.

On 5th September 1944, the American forces moved
out of Verdun towards Metz. Two German companies
were moved into the fort and they opened fire as the
US troops attempted to cross the Moselle causing a
great loss of life and forcing General Patton’s troops
to withdraw. Eventually the Americans formed a
bridgehead at Arnaville but they were ordered to hold
fire as they were now short of ammunition. Following
the humiliating withdrawal, Patton was determined to
take the fort and authorized General Irwin to

undertake a limited operation against DRIANT. The
fort was attacked by two infantry companies with little
success and after two days a battalion was ordered
fonward but they fared little better and the attack was
called off in October. The infantry eventually captured
Metz but DRIANT continued to hold out and
instructions were issued not to mount another assault
with a further loss of life. The fort eventually
surrendered to the 5th Infantry Division on 3rd
December 1944 and 400 weary German soldiers
emerged. The American forces ignored the fort and
matched on towards the Rhine.

Today the fort is still owned by the French army and
is completely derelict and largely stripped. Most of
the barrack blocks are still in good condition although
floors have generally been removed and in some
places there is obvious damage caused by the
attack. The four triple gun batteries are also intact
although now also stripped of most original fittings.
The tunnels linking the blocks have generally
survived in good condition and easily passable
although one at the southern end of the fort has
received a direct hit and is strewn with rubble
although still passable with care. The fort is still used
by the French army as a training area although it is
doubtful if the buildings and tunnels are used; most of
the entrances to the blocks and tunnels have been
blocked up with a few bricks now knocked out to
allow access. The area is wide open and despite
numerous signs indicating that it is military property
with entrance prohibited it is used by the local people
as a picnic and recreation area when the army are
not in residence.

The main entrance through the high earth bank is
through a stone archway on the east side at the end
of a long steep entrance road. The earth bank was
originally topped with barbed wire although this is
now largely gone, defended observation posts still
remain along the bank at regular intervals. The fort is
littered with ammunition of all calibres and from all
periods. Much of it is very rusty but many of the
shells are still live and should be treated with extreme
caution.

Having entered the fort through the archway we
made our way to the main block on the West Side.
This is a large two level semi sunken structure with a
stairway at both ends and several observation
cupolas accessed by ladders on the west side.
German signs are still visible on many of the walls
and many of them are still clearly readable. Although
it is known that the kitchen, ventilation plant,
generators, boilers, infirmary etc, would have been
located on the ground floor everything has been
stripped out including the ventilation trunking,
electrical fittings and wiring and there is little

35

Subterranea

A little French excursion

evidence to indicate what the many rooms at this
level were used for. Only the generator room (Usine)
is obvious with a number of concrete engine beds still
in place. The upper floor would have been
accommodation but again there is little evidence in a
large number of empty rooms. Unlike the later
Maginot Liner forts these early forts had hammocks
rather than bunk beds and their fixings are still visible
on the walls on the upper level.

There is bomb damage to the northeastern end of the
building that has left a gaping hole in the roof with the
debris blocking the entrance to the tunnel to the
northeast. At the southern end the tunnel running to
the southeast is still accessible. This leads to one of
the four gun batteries. The semi sunken battery is on

two levels with a caponier defending the ditch to the
east. The magazines and crew rooms are on the
lower level with an ammunition lift still in place to
each of the 10cm canons above. A short flight of
stairs gives access to the underside of each of the
gun turrets with most of the mechanism for rising and
rotating the turret still in place. A ladder gives access
to the turret itself where much of the mechanism is
still in place although the gun barrel has been
removed. There is a chute to one side for disposing
of spent shell cases.

From this battery another tunnel, 250 feet in length
runs to the southeast to one of the two 15cm
batteries. This is in similar condition although a little
smaller. At this battery the gun barrels in the turrets
are still in place. There is considerable bomb damage
to the southern end of the block although this isn't
visible externally. Another 250 foot tunnel runs west

to a largely destroyed block. This tunnel is badly
collapsed along most of its length although still
passable with care.

There are two further batteries to the north of the
main barrack block, one 10cm and one 13cm, These
are both in similar condition to the pair to the south
with their guns still in place. A 600 yard tunnel runs
from one of these batteries to a well preserved
barrack block on the north west corner of the fort and
a shorter tunnel runs from a 4th battery to a similar
barrack block close to the north east corner of the
fort. The 5th 10cm battery lies outside the main area
of the fort close to the southeast corner. Any tunnels
do not connect this and as we were running out of
time it wasn’t visited.

Having spent an enjoyable day
at DRIANT we drove a two
miles to the north to visit
OUVRAGE DU BOIS DE LA
DAME, one of seven single
block fortifications built
between 1903 - 1910 as part
of the German defences
around Metz, these are sited
between DRIANT and FORT
JEANNE D'ARC. Each of
these blocks is different in
design and they are
collectively known as ‘The
Seven Dwarfs'. BOIS DE LA
DAME is the middle block of
the seven and is by far the
best preserved. It's built of
reinforced concrete on 3 levels
(one below ground) with a
double caponier at the front.
Having been handed over to
France in 1918 it was
captured by German forces in 1940 and fell to the
Americans in 1944 without seeing any action.

It features an experimental metal casemate which is
divided into two sections with two machine gun
positions on one side and a searchlight position on
the other, these are both accessed by ladder from a
short tunnel running south for the upper floor of the
blockhouse. This type of casemate proved to be too
noisy inside and was not used anywhere else.

Although well preserved with no damage or
vandalism the blockhouse has been stripped of all
fittings apart from a large fuel tank in one of the
rooms in the basement. It’s wide open and free for
anyone to enter.

On our way back to Thionville we stopped briefly at
Gravelott to visit the first military cemetery in Europe

Fort Driant - Gun Cupola Photo by Dan McKenzie

36

Subterranea

A little French excursion

containing both German and French soldier from the
Franco-Prussian war of 1870 = 1871 Mance Ravine
to the east of Gravelott saw heavy fighting both in
1870 and 1944 with 55,000 French soldiers killed at
the Battle of Gravelott in August 1870. The French
were repulsed and forced back Into the Fortress of
Metz and the Germans went on to defeat the French
army at Sedan. There is a memorial to the
massacred French soldiers on the north side of the
N3 road to the east of Gravelott.

Two more Feste forts were on the programme for
Tuesday the first at GUENTRANGE is a museum
while that at KOENIGSMACKER is derelict and
overgrown.

Regiment, stationed at Thionville, used the fort as a
munitions store.

The military moved out of the fort in 1971 and handed
it over to the Town Council and to the Friends of the
Fortifications of Guentrange, one of many
‘Associations’ that administer, maintain and restore
forts on the Maginot Line. The fort is now open to the
public from 1st May - 30th September on the 1st and
3rd Sunday of each month and at other times by
arrangement.

The fort has three barracks, a central one, which is
the biggest, and two secondary barracks north and
south of it. Between the two barracks and at a higher
level are two batteries each equipped with four non

Feste Wagner - Gun Cupolas Photo by Robin Ware

The fortified blocks of
GUENTRANGE are 4km west
of Thionville on the summit of
one of the Moselle hills that
dominate the wide valley of
the Thionville regain of the
Moselle. Work on the fort was
started by the Germans in
1899 and the defence works
were known to be operational
at the end of 1905. After the
annexation of Alsace and part
of Lorraine in 1871, when the
Germans began to reinforce
their new conquest over
France, GUENTRANGE, like
□RIANT was part of their
planned outer ring of
fortifications of the Moselle
between Metz and the
Luxembourg frontier. Three
forts around Thionville were
built to protect the town and its
railway network from a French attack. This was part
of the Schleiffen-Moltke plan which forsaw that in the
event of a Franco-German war, the majority of the
German army would invade France by passing
through Belgium and Luxembourg and that an
offensive of the powerful right wing of the French
army would be likely to fail when it came up against
the defence works at Metz and Thionville.

Although the fort at GUENTRANGE did not come
under attack during WW1 it did play an important
strategic role. It was handed back to the French after
the Armistice of 1918 and was integrated into the
Maginot Line in the 1930's. In 1940, the Germans
recaptured the fort and used it as a depot and
workshop without maintaining any troops there. The
American army took it over in 1944 and destroyed
some of the guns before moving out towards the
Rhine. After the war, the French 25th Artillery

retractable rotating turret guns armed with short
10cm canons each with a range of 9.7 km. The
barracks, which are partially buried to reduce their
visibility from the air, were masonry built with walls
1.5metres thick. Originally there were windows but
with increasing tension towards the beginning of
WW1 the exposed facades of the barracks and the
batteries were lined with reinforced concrete and the
windows were replaced with iron clad slats for firing.

Infantry parapets surrounded the barracks and
batteries with shelters and observation posts for
infantry. There was also a network of barbed wire 30
metres thick, overlooked by sentry posts.
Underground galleries linked all the defended blocks,
barracks and magazines. After 1912 a new line of
concrete infantry trenches was constructed with three
additional picket shelters. The modernisation
continued until 1916 when central heating was

37

Subterranea

A little French excursion

We retraced our steps along the tunnel to a
junction where we made our way to one of
the defended observation blocks at the
north end of the fort. At the end of the
tunnel steps took us up into the block and
out into the woodland where the concrete
trench system was built just before WW1.
We snaked our way along the trenches and
back into the tunnels through another
defended block.

We walked back to the main barracks and
along the upper floor, which contained the
dormitories. All the hammocks have now
gone and the rooms now contain displays
of artifacts and photographs relating to the
various phases of the fort. These include
numerous artillery shells, helmets, machine
guns and even three vintage motorcycles.
At the far end of the upper level is the
infirmary with its operating theatre and
dentists room and the only mannequin to
be found anywhere in the fort, lying on the
operating table awaiting the surgeons knife.

installed in the fort. During the integration of the fort
into the Maginot Line the short 10cm canons were
replaced by long ones of the same caliber taken from
the forts in Metz. This increased the range of the
guns to 12.7 km.

For our privately arranged trip we were lucky to have
an English speaking guide, who has worked as a
volunteer at the fort for the last 20 years and has
lived in the area throughout WW2. Our tour started

Deutz diesel generators, installed in 1916 and still in
good working order. One room on the lower floor
also contained a replica of a VI rocket that had been
built by one of the volunteers at the museum.

We then moved into the tunnel network and made
our way to one of the ‘L’ shaped batteries of four 10
cm canons. In the tunnel we passed through several
doors that would have allowed the battery to be
sealed off from the rest of the tunnel network. The
first room we came to was the battery
commander’s room with an observation
cupola, speaking tubes to each of the four
guns and controls for firing the four guns
individually or simultaneously. After the
American forces had taken the fort in 1944,
a charge was dropped into each of the gun
barrels rendering them unusable. One of
these has now been replaced and the
ammunition lift for that gun from the
magazine below has been renovated. The
other three guns in the battery have not
been restored and are still as left in 1944.

Fort Guentrange - concrete trench system photo by Dan McKenzie Our tOUr ended here and we walked back

on the lower floor of the main block where room after
room contains original equipment still in good order.
These rooms included the officers’ kitchen, mens'
kitchen, bakery, toilets and wash rooms and the
boiler room, which provided the hot water for the
central heating. Perhaps the most impressive were
the three generator rooms each with three gleaming

down the main stairs to the ground floor. We
took a brief look at some of the buildings from the
outside including the battery that we had previously
visited where the long barrels with their barrels split
by the charges placed inside them were still clearly
visible.

This is a well laid out museum with the display areas
carefully separated from the original equipment which

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has been sympathetically restored and gives a good
feel of what the fort would have been like during
WW1 with no ropes and interpretation boards to
detract from the scene. It is highly recommended.

From GUENTRANGE we drove back into Thionville
to look at a small bunker at the far end of the station
yard that had been built at the turn of the century to
defend the railway station. The two level strongpoint
with numerous embrasures on all faces came under
heavy fire from the American troops in 1944. The
Americans on the opposite side of the river came
under repeated fire from the Germans occupying the
bunker. The Americans eventually brought two 155
mm guns up to the opposite bank and opened fire on
the bunker blowing it full of holes, which are still
clearly visible today. A similar
strongpoint still stands
alongside the railway on the
opposite side of the Moselle.

We then drove out of Thionville
to KOENIGSMACKER another
of the three forts built to defend
Thionville at the turn of the
century (The third is ILLANGE)

Like GUENTRANGE, this fort
never saw action during WW1
and it was handed back to
France in 1918. It too was
adapted into the Maginot Line
as a headquarters for the
senior command of the forts
along the around Thionville. At
the time it was upgraded with
new electrical switchgear and
the guns were rebarrelled with
10cm long canons for firing
towards Germany. In 1940 the
fort was garrisoned by French troops but they fled in
front of the advancing German army but before
leaving they removed the breech blocks from the
guns and threw them into a sewage pit. The
Germans weren’t, however, interested in the fort until
the summer of 1944; with the threat from the
advancing American forces they tidied up the fort. As
the US army reached Thionville in September 1944
the Germans retreated to the eastern bank of the
Moselle, they were mainly young recruits or elderly
soldiers and had little enthusiasm for a fight. In
November 1944 when the Americans crossed the
Moselle the river was in flood and they were unable
to build bridges and found themselves on the east
side of the river with no artillery support.

358 Infantry Regiment attacked the fort armed only
with the weapons they were carrying and managed to
get on top of the fort before the Germans realised

what was happening; the German officers were not
familiar with the layout of the fort. Learning from their
mistakes at DRIANT the Americans proceeded with
caution, stopping the Germans getting out by blasting
the doors of the blockhouses one at a time and
throwing in explosives. Large quantities of petrol
were then poured into the fort down the ventilation
pipe followed by a thermite grenade; the German
troops soon surrendered.

Although the fort is still owned by the French army,
the site is now completely overgrown and there has
been no obvious post war military use. We entered
the fort will permission from the army. The
earthworks are surrounded by an earth bank which
has a tunnel running inside it most of the way round

the perimeter of the fort. There are numerous strong
points along the perimeter accessed from this tunnel.
We entered the tunnel by the main gate into the
compound. After 1000 metres it is blocked, probably
as a result of charges set by the Americans. We
retraced our steps to the first strongpoint and
descended through three levels of rooms to the main
tunnel network that runs beneath the fortified hilltop.

After several junctions we came to the main three
level barrack block with the tunnel entering at the
middle level. This level is treacherous with the floor of
the main spine corridor consisting of steel plates,
some of which are missing while the rest are loose
with many arched upwards. Immediately beneath the
plates is the basement corridor, which for most of its
length is no more than a service tunnel carrying
pipes, and cables. In the middle of this corridor
several rooms can be accessed; one of them is the

Maginot Line Abri de Berebach - restored telephone exchange photo by Dan McKenzie

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boiler room with its two central heating boilers still in
place. Back at ground level, most of the rooms have
been stripped although some of the ventilation
trunking, cables and radiators still remain and the
kitchen still retains its two circular cookers. The upper
level was mainly dormitories with hammocks and
these rooms have all been stripped of any original
fittings.

We returned to Thionville via a pair of Maginot Line
casements defending the railway line at
Koenigsmacker. One of the casemates,
KOENIGSMACKER SOUTH, had been demolished
although we noticed a coupola, which was probably
from it in a nearby garden. The other casemate,
KOENIGSMACKER NORTH, was flooded and
access wasn’t possible.

We retraced our steps along the entrance tunnel and
turned right at a crossroads. A few yards further on
there was a T' junction with the generators to the left
and the gun battery to the right. We turned to the left
into another lethal passage with a gaping hole in the
floor down to a tunnel below and beyond, rotting
timbers above a service duct. Several of the timbers

broke as they were stepped on. The first room on the
left was the tiled bakery; the oven is still in place
although its front is missing. Beyond this is a
workshop and then the generator room. The three
diesel generators have been removed although the
concrete machine beds that supported them are still
in place. At one end of the room the large electrical
control cabinet is still there although many of its dials
and switches are missing. There is a smaller floor
standing electrical cabinet in an adjacent room.

The four gun battery has been largely stripped with
only cables remaining. Unlike DRIANT where the
mechanisms for the turret guns are still intact, here
everything has been removed allowing us to look
directly up at the underside of the four turrets. As
time was pressing we had to cut short our exploration
at this point leaving numerous tunnels and
strongpoints to be seen at a later date.

On Wednesday our first destination was the museum
of HACKENBERG at Veckring, this fort is one of the
largest on the Maginot Line with more than 10km of
tunnels and 17 blocks; when fully manned it housed
1000 men. Some of us had visited HACKENBERG
before but as half our party hadn’t seen the fort it was
decided to include it in the programme as it gives a
good introduction to the
Maginot Line. The fort is
normally only open at
weekends during the summer
but special midweek visits can
be arranged for parties of 25
or more.

Most of the larger Maginot
Line forts have a separate
entrance for munitions and
men; we entered through the
munitions entrance and quickly
reached the heart of the
complex visiting the central
magazines Ml, kitchen,
barracks (caserne), hospital
and generator and transformer
room (Usine). Our guide
explained how the four 350HP
diesel generators were
removed when the Germans
captured the fort during the war
and reinstalled in submarine pens. After the war the
French army demanded that four replacements
should be provided and four identical generators
were returned to the fort in 1949; it is possible that
they were the same generators as those removed.

The caserne has been stripped of all its bunk beds
and now houses an impressive display or weapons
and military uniforms. We moved back into the main
tunnel where we boarded a narrow gauge train,
powered from overhead electric lines. This took us
over 1 km to the fighting blocks which at Hackenburg
are divided into two areas east and west. The public
can only visit the blocks to the west; those to the east
have not been restored as the floors in the tunnel
have lifted due to deposits of gypsum in the rock.

One of the disadvantages of visiting Maginot Line
forts is the fact that the fighting blocks are located

Maginot Line Transformer Station Xirvy Circourt photo by Dan McKenzie

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All too soon out trip was coming to an end
and we made our way back to the
munitions entrance by train having been
underground for three hours; the normal
public tours only take two.

Maginot Line Gros Ouvrage Schoenenbourg - Main Gallery
photo by Dan McKenzie

After lunch at an abandoned Abri or Interval
shelter, the ABRI DES WELCHES close to
the GROS OUVRAGE MONT DES
WELCHES we drove to another museum,
the Abri at BOCKANGE. Like most of the
museums it is owned by an association and
at short notice we were able to arrange a
private visit. When the association took
over the bunker from the French army in
1991 it had been almost completely
stripped and was derelict and abandoned.

In the intervening 10 years it has been
superbly restored to its original condition
with much of the equipment being obtained
from various abandoned forts. BOCKANGE
is not an artillery block; it housed a
command centre and provided barrack
accommodation for 100 troops that manned
individual casemates along the line. On the
upper level we saw the telephone
exchange, officers dormitory, filtration and
ventilation plant and on the lower floor we
saw the kitchen, usine, water tank and well and one
of the men’s dormitories. The two diesel generators
have only just been acquired and are currently being
restored; all the other equipment and plant in the
bunker is in full working order.

short incline down into the tunnel network. Close to
the bottom of the incline is the Usine, the four diesel
generators are still in place but badly stripped,
possibly by the museum forts looking for spare parts
for their own generators.

some distance above the main tunnels and at the
derelict forts it is sometimes necessary to climb up to
500 stairs to visit one block. Luckily at
HACKENBERG the lifts are still in good order so we
were able to go up into block 9, the easy way. The
135cm turret gun is still in good order having been
restored in 1953 by the French army following an
explosion in the breech. We were told that if they had
the ammunition it could still be fired today.

We were shown how the turret could be
raised and rotated by electric motor. We
then went outside the block where there
was a further demonstration of the turret
being raised. We then walked on the
surface to Block 25 which overlooks the
deep anti-tank ditch and to Block 8 that had
suffered a sustained bombardment from
the advancing American forces with the
substantial damage caused still clearly
visible.

didn't look that comfortable. Our final visit of the day
was to the Gros Ouvrage of MONT DES WELCHES.
Again we have visited this site before but we were
close by and being a compact Gros Ouvrage it made
a good introduction to an abandoned Maginot Line
fort for those newcomers in our party. We entered the
fort through the munitions entrance, the door being
wide open and free for anyone to enter. There is a

After the tour our guide produced a crate of beer for
refreshment and offered us the use of the Abri as a
base should we wish to visit the area again, we may
well take him up on his kind offer although the beds

As we made our way along the tunnel towards the
men’s entrance we noticed the walls were covered in
soot, probably from illegal scrap dealers burning the
insulation off the copper cables. This was probably

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done recently as there were no footprints in the soot
on the stairs up to the mens’ entrance. It was quickly
apparent that there had been considerable robbing
and vandalism since our last visit to the fort in 2001.

We climbed the stairs to most of the fighting blocks.
The two turret guns are still largely intact although
many parts have been removed. We were able to
raise one of the turrets and change the elevation of
the gun although we weren’t able to rotate the turret
as the mechanism was seized. It is surprising that the
80 ton turret could still be easily raised after so many
years of disuse.

On Wednesday we returned to the Metz area to look
at FESTE WAGNER, another fort in the outer ring

around Metz; it was built by the Germans between
1904 and 1910 and was the last masonry fort to be
built. At that time masonry was cheaper than
concrete but later this reversed. The fort was handed
back to France in 1918 when it was renamed
GROUPE FORTIFE L’AISNE. It's owned by the local
authority and is slowly being restored although many
areas are still derelict and abandoned and the
restoration to date has been little more than tidying
up. The fort is open to the public on six Sundays a
year through the summer and at other times by
arrangement. For our visit we were lucky to have an
English speaking guide who included some parts of
the fort that are not included in the public tours. It’s
not connected to mains electricity but there is lighting
in most of the blocks provided by small diesel
generators.

The fortified area comprises four infantry works and
three batteries, one of four 15cm howitzers, one of

four 10cm canons and one of two 15cm long range
canons. We looked first at the latter battery. The two
guns were housed in open emplacements with their
holdfasts still clearly visible, as are magazines
alongside. Close to the emplacements there is a
small two room command post but this is empty with
only a little wiring remaining. This battery was
connected by standard gauge railway to the main line
with the track running along the back of the
emplacements; there is little evidence of this track
today.

There was no tunnel linking this battery with the
adjacent battery of four 15 cm turret mounted
howitzers each with a range of 7.2 km. This stone
built block is externally in good condition with a
caponier overlooking the ditch
at the back of the battery. This
block also housed the Usine
for the fort but the six diesel
generators were removed long
ago with only the concrete
machine beds still visible in
two tiled rooms. The battery
commander’s room still has
three original telephones in
place, one in an acoustic
booth together with speaking
tubes allowing the commander
to speak to the four turrets
and the various strongpoints
located around the battery.
There is a tunnel linking the
caponier with the 10cm
battery to the west but our
route was on the surface. The
10 cm battery is another
masonry built blockhouse with
long barrel guns mounted in
turrets. The guns have been removed but the
association that administers the fort has recently
acquired a replacement for one of them and this lies
in the undergro\A4h alongside the battery. They are
hoping that the gun will be mounted in a restored
turret later this year.

There is a tunnel linking the battery with the main
infantry barrack block to the west but this has been
blocked by a brick wall so our route was once again
on the surface; passing two dummy concrete turrets
in the woods between the two blocks.

The barrack block known as Ouvrage Avigy is of two
levels and built of reinforced concrete. Most of the
rooms have been stripped of all their original
equipment and fittings although the tiled kitchen on
the ground floor is well preserved with its four circular
ovens and extractors still in place. The four walls in
the adjacent room are covered in impressive wall art.

Maginot Line Gros Ouvrage Rochonvilliers Munitions Entrance photo by Dan McKenzie

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At the western end of the barrack block we were at The southern battery is badly damaged with gaping
last able to go underground along a tunnel to a small holes in the exposed rear wall and the middle section

strongpoint with two quick firing 5.3 cm cannons still of the block, including one of the turrets completely

in place. The strongpoint also housed a searchlight blown away. The remaining three turrets still retain

with a large embrasure located between the two their guns and associated machinery and each has

guns, several ammunition racks to the rear and a an ammunition lift alongside. At the western end of
number of speaking tubes. From here we walked the battery a short tunnel leads to a spiral staircase

along a further tunnel to the counterscarp whew there going down for 50 feet with another short tunnel at

is another strongpoint. This is not normally open to the bottom to a detached strongpoint. A similar

the public and it was soon apparent why when rotting strongpoint may also exist at the eastern end of the

floor timbers forced us to climb down a ladder, under battery. The tunnel linking the battery with the infantry

the floor and up another ladder the other side. Here block is at the bottom of a flight of steps; it has been

we saw an unusual feature, a mantrap consisting of partially blocked by a roof fall in the magazine above

long metal spikes at the bottom of a pit. but is passable by crawling over the rubble.

We retraced our steps and came out of the tunnel The barrack block is also badly damaged with holes

into the open where there are
some masonry trenches and a
second infantry barrack block
with another smaller kitchen, a
hospital and a number of
rooms containing artifacts and
numerous photographs of the
fort, many taken before
restoration started.

From a partially restored fort
our next destination was
FORT SAINT-BLAISE,
another of the Festes in the
Metz outer ring, located
between WAGNER and
DRIANT and very close to the
tiny FORT SOMMY. These
two forts comprised the
Verdun fortified group; it was
originally built as FESTE
GRAF HAESLER at the end of Maginot Line Gros Ouvrage Rochonvilliers Control Room photo by Dan McKenzie
the 19th century. With the

advance of the American forces in the autumn of in the front of the building and sections of the floors
1944 at least some of the turret guns were got into blown away. The block has been largely stripped of

working order although without optics. When the any original fittings although the baker’s oven, with its

Americans slipped a battalion across the Moselle at front missing, still remains in one of the rooms on the

Dornot in early September, their mission was to ground floor. The Usine was also located on this level

capture the fort but they were beaten off by troops although the four diesel generators were removed
from the 17th SS Panzergranadier Division and were many years ago with only the engine beds and a

forced to abandon their bridgehead. A further small section of the main control panel still remaining,

crossing was made at Arnaville which could not be The kitchen was on the middle floor and the range is

exploited owing to lack of troops and SAINT-BLAISE still there although it has been dragged into one of

remained a thorn in their side. They closed up on the the corridors. At the eastern end of the barrack block

fort, keeping it buttoned down until it surrendered in there is a well with the pump still in place,
mid November having suffered severe damage which

is clearly visible today. The fort, which is still owned A short tunnel at the rear of the building leads to the

by the French military is now an overgrown ruin. second gun battery which has been completely

stripped. Not only have the turret guns and all their
SAINT-BLAISE is a compact fort with a three level associated machinery been removed but the four

masonry built barrack block and a battery of four steel turrets have also gone leaving four large holes

turret guns a short distance to the south and a similar in the roof of the block. The framework for the
battery to the north. Tunnels link the three blocks. ammunition lifts are still in place and there are some

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German signs still visible on the walls. There are
stairs up to an observation cupola at each end of the
block and at the front at each end there is a tunnel to
counterscarp firing positions from where two spiral
staircases lead down to tunnels to detached
observation cupolas.

Our final destination was to the Petit Ouvrage BOIS
KARRE a single block Maginot Line Infantry ouvrage
defending the area between the Gros Ouvrage of
KOBENBUSCH to the east and the Gros Ouvrage of
SOETRICH to the north west. It was built in 1933 and
included three observation cupolas, three firing
chambers with twin machine guns and 47mm anti¬
tank guns and a turret machine gun which
distinguishes it from an interval shelter or Abri.

The fort saw no action in 1944 and was kept
operational by the French army until the 1960's when
it was abandoned. It has been in private hands since
1983 and is slowly being restored. Much original
equipment is still in place including the turret gun
which can be wound up and down and rotated by
hand, ventilation plant and filters, kitchen range, bunk
beds for the 82 men that would have manned the fort
(they would have used a hot bed system) and the two
50 hp Renault diesel generators. These are currently
not working and are undergoing renovation.

Our first visit on Thursday was to the transformer
block of XIVRY-CIRCOURT. The purpose of these
blocks was to supply electricity to a number of forts in
the area, the high voltage electricity entering the
blocks from overhead pylons and then being
transformed to a lower voltage and supplied to the
local forts by underground cables. The forms were 8
- 10 km away. This transformer station supplied
electricity to the forts of Fermont. Latiremont and
Brehain.

The undefended single story blockhouse is on
farmland and it's now used, in part, to store hay. The
block is approximately 150 feet in length with a large
door at both ends and two large slots in the wall,
each with a canopy above them. The overhead
power cables would have entered the building at
these points and a line of disused electricity pylons
can be seen running across the nearby fields towards
the block. Inside there is a wide front corridor with
rails and a turntable pit at either end. There’s a large
cage on the wall opposite the slots with insulators for
securing the power cables.

One half of the block is a mirror image of the other;
it’s divided into various rooms some with engine beds
and others divided into bays. At the back of the latter
rooms ladders go down to short tunnels running the
width of the building; at the end of each tunnel there’s
an exit point for underground power cables. At the

back of the block there’s a battery room with a rack of
lead acid batteries still in place.

A number of unused porcelain insulators are stacked
in one room, one of them five feet long in a six foot
wooden crate.

With a couple of hours to spare before our arranged
visit to ROCHONVILLERS, we next made a return
visit to the Gros Ouvrage LATRIEMONT, where
nothing had changed since our list excursion there in
2001. Two generators are still in place, there is a
workshop with a large number of tools including a
lathe plus, a room with racks of electrical switchgear
which is generally in good condition and the caserne
area which is largely stripped out. We were able to
visit a number of the fighting blocks, each with
machinery still in place.

For many of us the ‘star attraction’ for this year’s
Maginot Line excursion was the visit to the GROS
OUVRAGE OF ROCHONVILLERS. This was
retained by the army and converted during the 1980’s
into a nuclear protected underground control centre,
remaining operational until 1998. Visits to the bunker
have always been declined in the past but one of
Tony Kemp's contacts, a Gendarme in Thionville was
able to persuade the army at Metz that we should be
allowed to visit and photograph the bunker. A
lieutenant from the Metz Garrison arrived at the gate
promptly at 2pm to let us in. The word had got out
that the army had finally agreed to a visit and we
were joined by a number of French enthusiasts from
the local museums and associations who were also
keen to see inside the fort.

When we first looked at the entrance block from
outside the perimeter fence in 2000 the French flag
was still flying and there were various cameras
trained on us so we beat a hasty retreat. When we
drove past two years later the flag had gone and the
cameras looked as if they were no longer in use. Our
army guide came into the bunker with us and stayed
there throughout the two hour visit but we were able
to wander round freely and photograph anything we
saw. The French all stayed with our guide but the
Brits soon split away from the main party; the
Lieutenant later commented that he wished he had
come with us!

We went in through the old mens’ entrance, which
was rebuilt during the modernisation with a blast wall
added in front of the entrance forming a covered
entrance porch. Soil has been piled over the bare
concrete of the block and the whole structure has
been painted in camouflage colours. The munitions
entrance has been modified in a similar way with a
large blast door allowing vehicles to drive into the
block. The mens’ entrance has a smaller blast door

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and just inside it there is a security post with a bank
of TV monitors for the CCTV cameras and a large
control panel. Beyond this a door on the right leads
through an air lock into the decontamination area.

A new lift has been installed in the original shaft and
the stairs around it have been renovated. The stairs
are very damp and slippery, as are most of the floors
throughout the bunker. Since the ventilation has been
turned off the bunker has been deteriorating and will
no doubt continue to do so unless a new owner can
be found; the army is hoping to sell the bunker. At the
bottom of the stairs the main corridor runs northwards
into the bunker. The original narrow gauge tramway
is still there but the overhead traction cables have
been removed and tubular ventilation trunking now
hangs from the ceiling. The first door on the left
opens into the Usine. The original generators have
been removed and replaced with four gleaming new
Poyaud diesel generators with only 467 hours on the
clock. Beyond these is the ventilation plant room,
again the original plant has been stripped out and
new fans and ventilation plant installed. Beyond this
is the plant control room with its impressive
operator's panel. To the right is a long room with
gleaming racks of electrical switchgear along both
walls.

Back in the main corridor, the next turning on the left
leads to the old magazines, these have been
completely rebuilt as the hub of the bunker with
numerous offices, a briefing room/lecture theatre with
raked seats and a projector screen, numerous maps
and situation boards on the walls. There is even a bar
with two large murals on the walls, one of New York
and the other of English phone box! Most of the
rooms in this area are completely empty.

Back in the main corridor there is a door on the right
which originally led to an emergency exit but plans on
the wall show that a number of rooms have been
excavated a short distance along the corridor.
Unfortunately the door to this corridor was locked and
we were unable to gain access. Beyond this corridor
the tunnel swings sharply to the left into the caserne
with the kitchen on the left and the dormitories to the
right. The tiled kitchen areas consisting of four rooms
have been stripped of all equipment although two
rooms still have extractor hoods.

On the right are the dormitories and toilets. The
original toilets and wash rooms have of course been
modernised and all the original bunks have been
removed and replaced with newer bunks of a similar
design, many of these still remain in place. The tiled
infirmary is also located in this area but this has also
been completely stripped. Beyond the caserne there
is a junction with the other main gallery back to the
munitions entrance.

Turning right towards the fighting blocks one of the
old stations ‘Gare D' is soon reached. Here the tunnel
widens to accommodate a passing loop on the
railway and a number of trucks are still parked on the
track at this point. As there is no locomotive it's
unclear if the tramway was actually used after the
modernisation.

Beyond the station, just before the junction to Block
9, a wall has been built across the gallery. Although
there is a door this has been welded shut and our
guide explained that there was bad air beyond and
the gallery and fighting blocks had been sealed off
and in any case never formed part of the nuclear
bunker. Returning to the mens entrance we noticed
an original machine guns in one of the alcoves south
of Gare D.

Back on the surface we walked up into the woods
behind the two entrances, here there is a large ‘T’
shaped WW2 building that was used as
accommodation for the security guards. There are
dog kennels and an exercise area in the woods
nearby. The building has shuttered windows along all
sides, a main entrance at the front and a larger door
for heavy machinery and plant at one end.

New toilets and washrooms have been added but
the building appears to have been unfinished; in one
large room the walls are still bare concrete.

The building was built by the Germans for the
Luftwaffe after 1940 but it is also recorded that it was
a ‘Fuehrer Bunker' for Hitler and is known as ‘Anlage
Brunhilde’. It seems unlikely, however, that Hitler
ever used the bunker although it may have been
there for him to use if required. Even that seems
unlikely as the building can hardly be described as a
bunker. Although it is built of reinforced concrete it
has numerous windows. Perhaps it was intended to
excavate an entrance into the old Maginot Line fort
from the building.

Sub Brit members discovered an identical building at
the Osowka complex at Gory Sowie (Owl Mountain)
during a visit to Poland in 2002. This too is unfinished
and its use is unknown.

We had a 6 a.m. start on Friday morning as we had
to drive down towards Strasburg to meet up with a
German Maginot Line enthusiast Stefan Artner who
had arranged the days programme. Our first
destination was the GROS OUVRAGE OF
SCHOENENBOURG another museum. We always
try and include a mix of sites, some derelict and
some restored sites; SCHOENENBOURG turned out
to be one of the best we had visited.

Stefan is one of the guides at the fort and he was

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Subterranea

A little French excursion

able to arrange a much longer tour on a day that the
fort isn’t usually open to the public. The fort has been
very well restored over a long period. The
Association that now owns and runs it took over the
site in 1978 so they have had over 20 years to collect
what artifacts they need from the other derelict sites
and almost every room has been restored to its
original condition with original equipment. Many
museums are full of mannequins and interpretation
boards which make them look more like a museum
than a working fort, this hasn't happened at
SCHOENENBOURG and it was possible to get a
good feeling of what the fort must have been like in
the 1930’s.

We went first to the fighting blocks, which meant an

800 yard, walk; all the blocks are located in close
proximity at one end of the main gallery. Perhaps the
most impressive part of the fort was the command
post and telephone exchange, which are located in
side galleries just before the fighting blocks. We were
able to visit 3 of the 6 blocks; normally only Block 3 is
open to the public. Luckily the blocks are all quite
shallow so we didn’t have to climb too many stairs.
Block 3 is an infantry block with two machine guns
and an observation cupola. This block is unlit and
hasn’t been restored; both machine guns are still in
place.

Next we went to Block 4 with twin 75mm turret gun
and two observation cupolas. Again this block hasn’t
been restored although it is lit. Here we were able to

climb up into the turret and sit in the gunner’s seat.
The magazines below still contain a large number of
stillages (ammunition holders); a number of them
suspended from an overhead monorail, which is how
they are transported around the magazine. We also
visited Block 3 where a second 75 mm turret guns
has been restored and we were able to wind it up and
down by hand and rotate the turret. One of the
magazines below is almost completely full with
stillages. There is a small museum area in one of the
other magazines devoted to motors of various kinds
including two large generators, which must have
been dismantled to get them along the narrow
passage and into the magazine, and then
reassembled. We then walked back towards the
entrance block and into the caserne and usine, which
are located close to the mens
entrance. Most of the
dormitories have been
completely restored with bunks
and a stack of personal
artifacts that would have been
found in a dormitory. Both the
kitchen and infirmary have
also been well preserved. The
usine was something of a
surprise; there are four
generators there, all in good
working order but they were
unusually very small, much
smaller than those to be found
in similar sized forts. Close by
there are two long filter rooms
opposite each other, both with
banks of cylindrical filter drums
along each wall.

After returning to the surface
we looked at all the surface
features of the fort which,
unusually, are all located in
one field, devoid of any trees
and undergrowth.

In the afternoon we went to the GROS OUVRAGE
OF HOCHWALD. This is the largest Maginot Line
fort; a claim that’s also made by HACKENBERG. It’s
true that Hackenburg does have the more fighting
blocks than any other fort but HOCHWALD has the
longest total length of tunnels. HOCHWALD, like
HACKENBURG is divided into two distinct areas of
fighting blocks with five blocks to the west and six to
the east. There is also a third section of the fort
located between the two known as REDUIT this
would have had two entrance blocks but was
uncompleted as the money ran out. It is unclear if
there was ever any intention to drive an underground
connection to the main complex.

HOCHWALD is unique as it has two mens’

Maginot Line Gros Ouvrage Hochwald Munitions Entrance photo by Robin Ware

46

Subterranea

A little French excursion

entrances, each with their own usine. There is also a
detached observation Block (Block 20) and a
staggered anti-tank ditch with 9 infantry casemates
overlooking it. The fort has been retained by the
French army and the caserne, usine and magazines
were modernised in the 1980's and now house one of
two NATO command centres in France; with 300
personnel working underground.

Before entering the fort we looked at a number of the
eastern fighting blocks, these have the construction
date engraved on a metal panel on the front (1932
and 1933), we have not seen this at any other
Maginot Line forts. As HOCHWALD is an active
military base we were accompanied at all times and
were not allowed to take photographs in certain
areas. We entered by
the old men’s entrance
which has been altered
in a similar manner to
ROCHONVILLERS with
a blast wall built in front
of the block forming a
covered porch. In this
case the bare concrete
of the block has been
retained without any soil
cover. Inside the door,
there's a security post
with a turnstile
alongside for access.

Unusually, the main
gallery is at the same
level as the entrance
block. After a short
distance, the tunnel
turns slightly to the left
and here the Maginot
Line machine gun
position for defending
the entrance tunnel has
been restored.

A short distance beyond,
the tunnel opens out into

what would have been one of the stations with a
passing loop. The narrow gauge track is still in situ
but has been covered over and isn’t visibie. Three
lines of tubular ventilation trunking and cables now
hand from the ceiling. A small battery powered fire
engine stands in the station.

Just past the stations two tunnels on the right curve
round into the main magazine, each of them with a
long railway platform. Two of the magazines now
house a private museum with an impressive display
of ammunition, artillery, photographs and maps
relating to the Maginot Line. This museum is not
open to the public and looking at the visitors’ book we
noticed most of the visitors have been military

personnel.

Back in the main gallery, the heavy steel blast door
that would allow the rest of the fort to be sealed off is
still in place although it can no longer be closed
because of the metal ventilation trunking. A section of
the door frame and wall has been cut away to allow
vehicles to move more freely into the bunker. We
noticed a number of small battery powered vehicles.

Beyond the blast door there is a junction to the right
with a short section of tramway track still visible. One
of the original overhead electric locomotives and a
few wagons are stored here. The remainder were
donated to the fort at SCHOENENBERG. Beyond
this, a wall has been built across the tunnel as the

eastern fighting blocks and a second men's entrance
do not form part of the current bunker. The door into
this older section can still be opened as the disused
parts of the fort are sometimes used for exercises.
We went through the door a short distance and could
see occasional fluorescent lights disappearing into
the distance. The atmosphere in this area was very
humid.

Unfortunately, our short tour of the bunker ended at
this point as the command centre closes for the
weekend at 3 p.m. each Friday. As we walked back
along the main gallery a large number of military
personnel, many of them in Airforce uniforms, passed
us on their way home; a number of them were riding

Maginot Line Gros Ouvrage Hochwald Museum “Pierre Jost” photo by Dan McKenzie

47

Subterranea

A little French excursion

bicycles.

Although the fort closed at 3pm our military guide
stayed with us for another hour and took us to two
derelict parts of HOCHWALD that are located nearby
within the military area. First we went to one of the
infantry casemates built to defend the anti-tank ditch.
Casemate 3 was damaged by the Germans in 1944
and the present entrance door, which was fitted in
1946, came from the Atlantic Wall. As this door is
bolted from the inside, we climbed down a series of
stone steps into the anti tank ditch and then up a
ladder and through a trap door beneath the
casemate. Several bunk beds and a ventilation fan
still remain on the lower floor while on the upper floor
the machine guns have been removed although
some telephone junction boxes and other wiring is

still in place. A ladder goes up to an observation
cupola with its rising wooden platform and winding
gear still there.

Next we looked at REDUIT the third unfinished fort of
the HOCHWALD complex. One of the two entrance
blocks (Block 11) was built although it is now in an
overgrown and dilapidated condition; it is kept locked
by the army. Inside, initially it looks like a standard
Ouvrage but with completely bare concrete walls and
only temporary lighting in place; this no longer works.
After a short distance the tunnel turns to the left and
there is a machine gun position defending the
entrance tunnel. Beyond this the gallery opens out
into what would have been a ‘station’. There are a
number of alcoves cut into the walls, these are all in

unlined rock. Beyond the station the tunnel walls are
lined with masonry blocks. After 150 yards a junction
is reached, straight ahead the tunnel continues for
another 75 yards but is completely unlined. To the
left the masonry lined tunnel leads to what would
have been the second entry block (Block 11). There
are further unlined alcoves along this tunnel and by
going into these the construction of the tunnel can
clearly be seen as it is possible to walk behind the
masonry lining. After 200 yards there is a flight of
stairs and under the stairs a short tunnel. Both of
these lead to manhole covers.

Our military guide left us at this point but before
leaving we looked at Block 7 from the outside. This is
the second men's entrance to HOCHWALD and still
retained for emergency egress. After a very

enjoyable day we
drove to a nearby
restaurant that Stefan
had booked, and
enjoyed a local
Alsatian specialty
“Flamkutchen” a
Franco-German pizza,
before driving 130
miles back to
Thionville. After a
week with a very full
schedule I feel we
were all bunkered out
and ready to go home.
We left Thionville just
after 9 am the
following morning and I
think everyone was
relived when we finally
arrived at the channel
tunnel and were able
to drive on to the first
available train back to
England. My thanks to
Tony Page for arranging
this private trip and to
Dan McKenzie for doing the majority of the driving.
Also thanks to Tony Kemp and Stefan Artner for their
help in arranging the site visits. This is the fourth year
there has been a visit to the Maginot Line by Sub Brit
members and next years excursion is already being
planned.

Those present were Nick Catford, Dan McKenzie,
Tony Page, Robin Ware, Jason Blackiston Mark
Bennett, Jason Green, Pete Walker, Roy Smith, Bob
Lawson, John Burgess, Andy Coutanche, Richard
Challis, Clayton Donnell and Tony Kemp.

Nick Catford

Maginot Line Gros Ouvrage Hochwald Block 15 Twin Machine gun Turret photo by Dan McKenzie

48